TLbc  Science  Series 

EDITED    BY 

professor  J.  flDclteen  Cattell,  .X.H.,  ipb.SD. 

AND 

ff.  £.  JBeooaro,  AD.B.,  Sf.tR.S, 


THE  STUDY  OF  MAN 


€ 


THE  STUDY  OF  MAN 


MO- 


BY 

ALFRED  C.   HADDON 

M.A.,  D.Sc,  M.R.I.A. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW   YORK 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S   SONS 

.    LONDON 

BLISS,  SANDS,  &  CO. 
1898 


,V\3 


Copyright,  1898 

BY 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 


Zbc  ftnicfeerbocber  press,  mew  Both 


PREFACE 

AN  author  is  often  justly  criticised  for  the  manner  in 
which  he  has  performed  a  self-imposed  task — not  un- 
frequently  he  is  also  criticised  for  what  he  has  not  done.  I 
do  not  expect  to  be  free  from  the  former  line  of  criticism ; 
but  at  the  outset  I  would  remind  the  reader,  as  I  have  else- 
where mentioned,  that  this  does  not  profess  to  be  a  treatise 
on  anthropology,  or  its  methods,  but  merely  a  collection  of 
samples  of  the  way  in  which  parts  of  the  subject  are  studied. 
The  book  is  not  intended  for  scientific  students,  nor  for  ex- 
perts, but  for  the  amateur  and  for  that  delightfully  vague 
person,  the  intelligent  reader. 

I  must  confess,  too,  that  my  wish  is  not  merely  to  interest 
my  readers,  but  to  induce  them  to  become  workers.  As 
the  learned,  wise,  and  pious  John  Ray  wrote  nearly  two 
centuries  ago  in  The  Wisdom  of  God  Manifested  in  the  Works 
of  the  Creation : 

"  Let  it  not  suffice  us  to  be  Book-learned,  to  read  what  others 
have  written,  and  to  take  upon  Trust  more  Falsehood  than 
Truth  ;  but  let  us  ourselves  examine  things  as  we  have  oppor- 
tunity, and  converse  with  Nature  as  well  as  Books.  Let  us 
endeavour  to  promote  and  increase  this  Knowledge,  and  make 
new  Discoveries,  not  so  much  distrusting  our  own  Parts,  or 
despairing  of  our  own  Abilities,  as  to  think  that  our  Industry  can 
add  nothing  to  the  invention  of  our  Ancestors,  or  correct  any  of 
their  Mistakes.     Let  us  not  think  that  the  Bounds  of  Science  are 


90218 


iv  PREFACE 

fixed  like  Hercules 's  Pillars,  and  inscrib'd  with  a  Ne  plus  ultra. 
The  Treasures  of  Nature  are  inexhaustible.  Here  is  employment 
enough  for  the  vastest  Parts,  the  most  indefatigable  Industries, 
the  happiest  Opportunities,  the  most  prolix  and  undisturb'd 
Vacancies.     .     .     . 

"  Much  might  be  done,  would  we  but  endeavour,  and  nothing 
is  insuperable  to  Pains  and  Patience.  I  know  that  a  new  Study 
at  first  seems  very  vast,  intricate,  and  difficult ;  but  after  a  little 
resolution  and  progress,  after  a  Man  becomes  a  little  acquainted, 
as  I  may  so  say,  with  it,  his  Understanding  is  wonderfully  cleared 
up  and  enlarged,  the  Difficulties  vanish,  and  the  thing  grows 
easie  and  familiar." 

These  words  of  John  Ray  have  many  a  time  stimulated 
me;  may  they  encourage  others  to  study  human-kind. 
Once  more  I  must  insist  on  the  sad  fact  that  the  old  land- 
marks are  being  rapidly  removed,  and  there  is  a  pressing 
need  for  immediate  investigations  in  anthropology  in  this 
as  well  as  in  all  the  other  parts  of  the  world. 

It  is  now  my  pleasing  duty  to  take  this  opportunity  of 
thanking  those  who  have  assisted  me  in  their  various  ways. 

To  my  colleagues  in  different  departments  of  anthropology 
I  offer  the  thanks  of  a  comrade.  I  have  everywhere  en- 
deavoured to  render  unto  every  man  his  dues.  The  Pro- 
prietor and  Committee  of  Science  Progress  have  kindly 
permitted  me  to  reprint  as  Chapter  V.  an  article  of  mine 
that  appeared  in  the  January  number  of  that  valuable 
record  of  recent  scientific  advance. 

The  editor  of  The  Daily  Chronicle  has  courteously  given 
me  permission  to  make  use  of  a  series  of  articles  on  "  Toys 
and  Games:  Their  History  and  Literature/'  which  I  wrote 
for  the  Saturday  issue  of  that  enterprising  journal,  and 
which  were  published  in  August  and  November,  1896,  and 
in  January  and  February,  1897. 

Dr.  Paul  Topinard,  the  great  French  anthropologist,  gen- 


PREFACE  V 

erously  lent  me  the  blocks  of  the  maps  he  compiled  to  illus- 
trate the  distribution  of  hair  and  eye  colours  in  France. 
Amongst  other  authors  to  whom  I  am  indebted  for  permis- 
sion to  reproduce  their  illustrations,  I  would  mention 
Dr.  R.  Collignon,  Dr.  J.  Beddoe,  Mr.  C.  H.  Read  of  the 
British  Museum,  Professor  Telesforo  de  Aranzadi,  Mr.  G. 
Thurston,  and  others.  Finally  I  would  like  to  record  my 
indebtedness  to  my  friend,  Mr.  Edwin  Wilson,  of  Cam- 
bridge, the  artist  who  has  prepared  many  of  the  illustrations 
for  this  book. 

A.  C.  H. 

Inisfail,  Cambridge. 


CONTENTS 


Prefa.ce 

Introduction 

CHAPTER    I 
Measurements  and  their  Importance  in  Anthropology 

CHAPTER  II 
Hair  and  Eye  Colour 

CHAPTER  III 
Value  of  Head-Form  in  Anthropology  .... 

CHAPTER  IV 

The  Nose 

CHAPTER  V 
The  Ethnography  of  the  Dordogne  District 

CHAPTER  VI 
The  Evolution  of  the  Cart 

CHAPTER  VII 
The  Origin  of  the  Irish  Jaunting-Car  .... 

CHAPTER  VIII 
Toys  and  Games  :  Cat's  Cradle  and  Kites    . 

CHAPTER  IX 
Toys  and  Games  :  Tops  and  the  Tug-of-War 

CHAPTER   X 
The  Bull-Roarer 


PAGE 

iii 


12 


47 


69 


106 


128 


:59 


174 


219 


VI 11  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XI  page 

The  Singing  Games  of  Children 259 

CHAPTER    XII 
"London  Bridge":  Foundation  Sacrifice 275 

CHAPTER  XIII 
"Draw  a  Pail  of  Water":  Water  Worship  ....     288 

CHAPTER  XIV 
4«      Courting  Games 313 

CHAPTER  XV 
Funeral  Games 329 

CHAPTER  XVI 
Practical  Suggestions  for  Conducting  Ethnographical  Invest- 
igations in  the  British  Islands 348 


ILLUSTRATIONS  IN  THE  TEXT 

FIGURE  PAGE 

i.     Curves  of  relative  Brain  Capacity  of  Cambridge  University 

Students ;  after  Galton      9 

2.  Map  showing  the  Distribution  of  the  Index  of  Nigrescence 

in  England,  based  on  military  Schedules  ;  after  Beddoe      27 

3.  Map  showing  the  Distribution  of  dark  (brown  or  hazel) 

Eyes  in  England,  based  upon  military  Schedules  ;  after 
Beddoe 29 

4.  Map  showing  the  Distribution  of  the  Excess  of  pure  blond 

over  pure  dark  type  in  england,  based  upon  military 
Schedules  ;  after  Beddoe 30 

5.  Map  showing  the  Distribution  of  the  Colour  of  the  Eyes 

in  France  ;  from  Topinard 43 

6.  Map  showing  the  Distribution  of  the  Colour  of  the  Hair  in 

France  ;    from  Topinard 44 

7.  Map  showing  the  Distribution  of  the  combined  Colours  of 

the  Eyes  and  Hair  in  France  ;  from  Topinard  ...      45 

8.  Upper  and  side  Views  of  a  Kalmuk's  and  of  a  Negro's  Skull  ; 

after  Ranke 52 

9.  Types  of  Noses  in  Profile  ;  from  Topinard      ....      72 

10.  Head  of  Agrippina,  Museo  di  Napoli  ;  from  Hovorka      .        .      73 

11.  A,  Head  of  Zeus  Otricoli  ;  B,  the  same  with  all  the  Hair  re- 

moved,  AND    WITH    A  CORRECTED    PROFILE  ;   FROM    HOVORKA, 

after  langer 74 

12.  Heads  of  Japanese  Men  of  the  fine  and  coarse  Type  ;  from 

Hovorka,  after  Balz 80 

13.  Diagrams  of  the  Variations  in  the  Height  and  Breadth  of 

the  Noses  of  the  poorer  Classes  of  Brahmans  of  Madras 
City,   of  Tamil  Pariahs,  and  of  Paniyans,  two-thirds 

natural  Size  ;  after  Thurston 89 

ix 


X  ILLUSTRATIONS  IN  THE  TEXT 

FIGURE  PAGE 

14.  Lower  Border  of  Apertura  pyriformis  of  Orang-Utan  ;  from 

Hovorka 103 

15.  The  four  Types  of  the  lower  Border  of  the  Apertura  pyri- 

formis in  Man  ;  from  Hovorka 104 

16.  Outline  Map  of  the  Dordogne  District 107 

17.  Map  of  the  Dordogne  District,  illustrating  the  Distribu- 

tion OF  DOLICHOCEPHALISM   AND   BRACHYCEPHALISM  ;   AFTER 

Collignon no 

18.  Map  of  the  Dordogne  District,  illustrating  the  combined 

Distribution  of  light  and  dark  Eyes  and   Hair  ;   after 
Collignon 113 

19.  Map  of  Dordogne  District,  illustrating  the  Distribution  of 

Stature  ;  after  Collignon 116 

20.  Map  of  Dordogne,  illustrating  the  Distribution  of  length- 

height  Index  ;  after  Collignon 120 

21.  Map  of  Dordogne,  illustrating  the  Distribution  of  the 

breadth-height  Index  ;  after  Collignon    .        .        .        .120 

22.  Slide-Car,  Inverness  (1754) ;  after  Burt 131 

23.  Diagrams  illustrating  a  probable  Evolution  of  Wheels  from 

a  Roller 135 

24.  two  block-wheel  carts,  inverness  (1754)  j  after  burt  .        .139 

25.  Irish  low-back  Car  (1824) ;  after  Croker         ....     140 

26.  Celtic  Chariot,  from  the  GOttweiger  Situla  ;  after  Szom- 

BATHY 143 

27.  Agricultural  Scene  on  a  Vase  in  the  Campana  Collection, 

Louvre  ;  after  Duruy 144 

28.  Ancient  Greek  Carriage  on  a  Vase  ;  after  Duruy,  from  Ger- 

hard          145 

29.  Myken^ean  War  Chariot  of  the  Heroic  Age  on  the  Francois 

Vase  ;  after  Duruy 146 

30.  A    Series  of  early  Greek  Chariot   Wheels  from  various 

Sources 147 

31.  Various  Spanish  Wheels  ;  after  Telesforo  de  Aranzadi        .     149 

32.  Two  Carts  at  Dundonald,  Co.  Down  ;  from  Photographs    .     157 


ILLUSTRATIONS  IN  THE  TEXT 


XI 


FIGURE  PAGE 

33.  Irish  low-back  Car  (1769)  ;  after  Bush 160 

34.  Early  Form  of  Jaunting-Car  (1841) ;  after  Hall    .         .         .165 

35.  The  reverse  Side  of  a  Korean  Playing-Card  ;  after  Culin   .     177 

36.  Kites  from  Korea,  China,  and  Japan  (after  Culin),  and  from 

the  Solomon  Islands 189 

37.  Tops  from  Torres  Straits,  Timorlaut,  Straits  Settlements, 

and  Stewart  Islands  ;  after  C.  H.  Read    ....     207 

3S.     Bull-Roarers  from  the  British  Islands 221 

39.  Yoruba  Bull-Roarer,  W.  Africa  ;  from  Mrs.  R.  Braithwaite 

Batty 230 

40.  Bull-Roarers  from  South  Africa,  North  and  South  America, 

Malaysia,  New   Zealand,  British   New   Guinea,  Torres 
Straits,  and  Australia  ;   from  various  Sources         .        .     245 


FULL-PAGE  PLATES 


Plate  I.  Upper,  front,  and  side  Views  of  Long  and  Round 
Barrow  Skulls  ;  Photographed  by  the  Author 
from  Specimens  in  the  Cambridge  Anatomical 
Museum 

Plate  II.  Fig.  i.  Photograph  of  a  Tamil  Pariah  ;  after  Thurs- 
ton. Fig.  2.  Japanese  Women  of  the  fine  and 
coarse  Type  ;   after  a  Picture  by  Torii  Kiyonaga 

Plate  III.  Fig.  i.  Slide-Car,  Co.  Antrim  ;  from  a  Photograph 
by  Welch.  Fig.  2.  Slide-Car,  Co.  Antrim  ;  from  a 
Photograph  by  the  Author      

Plate  IV.  Fig.  i.  Block-wheel  Car,  Glenshesk  ;  from  a  Photo- 
graph by  Welch.  Fig.  2.  Block-wheel  Car,  Car- 
rickfergus  ;  from  a  photograph  by  welch 

Plate  V.  Fig.  i.  Basque  Ox-Waggon  ;  after  Telesforo  de  Aran- 
zadi.  Fig.  2.  Irish  Outside- or  Jaunting-Car  ,  from 
a  Photograph  by  Welch 

Plate  VI.  "Lords  from  Spain";  from  Photographs  b/  Miss 
Clara  M.  Patterson 


64 


So 


132 


140 


168 


320 


Plates  VII. ,  VIII.  "Jenny   Jones";  from  Photographs  by  Mr. 

J.  A.  Wood 330,  332 


INTRODUCTION 

IT  seems  strange  that  man  should  study  everything  in 
heaven  and  earth  and  largely  neglect  the  study  of  him- 
self, yet  this  is  what  has  virtually  happened.  Anthropology, 
the  study  of  man,  is  the  youngest  of  the  sciences,  but  who 
will  say  that  it  is  the  least  important  ? 

We  may,  perhaps,  find  one  reason  for  this  neglect  in  the 
peculiar  complexity  of  the  subject  and  the  difficulty  there  is 
in  approaching  it  from  a  dispassionate  point  of  view ;  there 
are  so  many  preconceived  opinions  which  have  to  be  re- 
moved, and  this  is  always  a  thankless  task.  Even  now  the 
scope  and  significance  of  anthropology  have  scarcely  been 
recognised. 

Some  well-meaning  and  enthusiastic  students  have  been 
so  impressed  with  the  importance  of  the  particular  depart- 
ment with  which  they  are  more  especially  interested  that 
they  have  neglected  others.  A  disparagement  even  has 
sometimes  been  more  implied  than  actually  expressed. 
Others  have  been  overwhelmed  with  the  details  they  have 
accumulated,  and  have  not  seen  the  wood  on  account  of  the 
trees.  The  whole  subject  is  so  vast  that  very  few  have  had 
the  requisite  training,  or  have,  or  rather  have  made,  the 
time  to  compare  the  results  of  one  branch  with  those  of 
another.  We  thus  have  the  trained  specialist  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  more  or  less  serious  amateur  on  the  other, 
too  often  not  only  working  independently  of  each  other,  but 
even    ignorant   of    the    other's    labours,  and   even   of   his 


XVI  INTRODUCTION 

existence.  Fortunately  this  lack  of  co-operation  and 
co-ordination  is  rapidly  decreasing,  and  a  living  science  of 
anthropology  is  emerging  which  will  be  acknowledged  by 
the  sister  sciences  as  its  methods  and  objects  become  more 
definitive.  > 

At  the  risk  of  being  tedious,  I  think  it  is  desirable  to  de- 
fine our  terms  at  the  outset.1  On  the  Continent  the  term 
anthropology  is  restricted  to  what  we  in  England  term 
physical  anthropology  or  somatology,  to  use  a  term  which 
is  now  being  widely  employed  by  our  American  colleagues 
— that  is,  the  study  of  man  as  an  animal.  This  comprises 
not  only  the  comparative  study  of  the  structural  differences 
between  members  of  different  races  of  mankind,  but  also  the 
comparison  of  man  with  the  higher  apes.  We  prefer  to  re- 
tain the  word  anthropology  for  the  study  of  man  in  its 
widest  aspect. 

Ethnography  is  the  description  of  a  special  people, 
whether  it  be  a  small  tribe,  the  natives  of  a  restricted  area, 
or  a  large  nation ;  it  includes  a  comparative  study  of  human 
groups,  and  has  for  its  aim  the  elucidation  of  the  inter- 
relationships of  tribes,  races,  and  other  bodies  of  men ;  thus 
it  deals  with  the  classification  of  peoples,  their  origin,  and 
their  migrations. 

Ethnology  may  also  be  divided  into  several  branches,  the 
four  more  important  of  which  are  Sociology,  Technology, 
Religion,  and  Linguistics. 

Sociology  is  the  study  of  human  communities,  both 
simple  and  complex,  and  an  attempt  is  now  being  made  to 
trace  the  rise  of  simple  communities  and  their  gradual  and 
diverse  evolution  to  the  complex  civilisations  of  ancient  and 
modern  times.     History,  in  the  ordinary  acceptance  of  the 

1  In  the  final  chapter  will  be  found  a  classification  and  international  nomen- 
clature of  the  various  departments  of  anthropology  which  has  been  proposed 
by  Dr.  D.  G.  Brinton,  of  Philadelphia. 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

term,  deals  more  especially  with  the  later  phases  of  this 
metamorphosis,  but  an  endeavour  is  being  made  to  get  be- 
hind history,  as  it  were,  and  to  attempt  to  account  for  the 
data  upon  which  historians  work.  The  physical  conditions 
of  a  country,  including  the  climate,  the  vegetation,  and  the 
indigenous  animals,  affect  the  life  of  the  human  inhabitants 
of  that  country ;  in  other  words,  the  mode  of  life  of  a  primi- 
tive people  is  conditioned  by  its  environment.  The  method 
of  living  affects  the  family  life,  and  so  we  find  that  certain 
types  of  family  organisation  are  related  to  definite  habits  of 
life.  As  civilisation  advances,  the  State  acquires  powers 
and  regulates  families  as  well  as  individuals,  but  the  charac- 
teristics of  different  forms  of  government  are  themselves  due 
to  the  type  of  family  organisation  which  obtains  among 
those  various  peoples.  According  to  this  method  of  in- 
vestigation, we  start  with  physical  geography  and  find  our- 
selves drawn  into  statecraft  and  political  economy. 

Other  fruitful  lines  of  study  are  to  be  found  in  tracing 
the  evolution  of  tools,  weapons — in  fact,  of  all  manufactured 
objects.  As  an  example  of  this  line  of  inquiry,  or  technol- 
ogy, I  shall  take  the  common  cart,  and  while  tracing  its 
evolution  we  shall  at  the  same  time  see  that  such  studies 
open  up  wider  questions  than  are  at  first  apparent. 

The  origin,  evolution,  and  migration  of  designs  and  pat- 
terns is  a  fascinating  subject,  and  one  replete  with  human 
interest,  as  being  associated  with  some  of  the  deepest  and 
most  subtle  ideas  of  mankind.  I  have  already  published  a 
small  book  '  on  this  subject. 

The  anthropological  study  of  religion  is  at  the  same  time 
fascinating  and  extremely  difficult.  It  is  not  my  intention 
to  tread  far  along  this  slippery  path  in  the  present  volume. 
Those  who  would  like  to  see  the  trend  of  recent  inquiries 

1  A.  C.  H addon,  Evolution  in  Art,  as  Illustrated  by  the  Life-Histories  of 
Designs.     Contemporary  Science  Series,  1895. 


XV111  INTRODUCTION 

should  read  the  masterly  works  of  Professor  E.  B.  Tylor, 
the  late  Professor  Robertson  Smith,  Dr.  J.  G.  Frazer,  and 
of  E.  Sydney  Hartland.  A  good  deal  of  what  is  included 
in  that  complex  of  beliefs,  sayings,  and  practices  which  is 
known  as  folk-lore,  comes  under  the  designation  of  religion 
as  that  term  is  understood  by  anthropologists. 

Archaeology  tries  to  reconstruct  the  ancient  history  of 
man  from  the  remains  of  the  past  which  are  brought  to 
light  in  various  ways.  Just  as  a  historian  studies  contem- 
poraneous documents  in  order  to  revivify  obscure  historical 
periods,  so  the  archaeologist  pores  over  flint  implements, 
fragments  of  pottery,  and  other  relics,  in  order  to  recon- 
struct the  life  of  our  remote  ancestors.  Earthen  vessels  are 
comparatively  easy  to  make,  and  though  they  are  brittle, 
their  fragments,  when  properly  baked,  are  well-nigh  inde- 
structible. The  history  of  man  is  unconsciously  largely 
written  on  shards,  and  the  elucidation  of  these  unwritten 
records  is  as  interesting  and  important  as  the  deciphering 
of  the  cruciform  inscriptions  on  the  clay  tablets  of  Assyria. 
The  book  of  pots  has  yet  to  be  written. 

It  is  interesting  to  know  what  our  forefathers  did,  to 
gauge  the  rank  of  their  culture,  and  to  trace  the  improve- 
ments which  gradually  took  place  ;  but  it  would  be  still 
more  interesting  if  we  could  recover  what  they  thought  and 
what  they  believed.  It  is  well  to  know  their  tools  and  their 
weapons ;  it  is  better  to  know  how  they  treated  one  another, 
and  what  were  their  ideas  of  the  non-material  aspect  of  their 
existence.  For  these,  after  all,  are  the  most  important 
departments  of  human  life.  Now  for  this  we  have  two 
methods  of  inquiry. 

In  a  general  survey  of  mankind  we  find  that  there  are 
peoples  in  all  stages  of  culture,  and  we  also  notice  that  there 
is  an  intense  conservatism  in  all  matters  of  social  or  religious 
importance.     When  a  people  is  isolated,  it  is  believed  that 


INTRODUCTION  xix 

changes  take  place  with  extreme  slowness;  indeed,  it  is 
probable  that  a  mingling  of  peoples,  whether  by  commerce, 
migration,  or  war,  is  almost  a  necessary  condition  for  change 
and  progress.  If,  then,  we  examine  a  people  that  has  for  a 
long  time  remained  isolated  from  contact  with  other  peoples, 
we  shall  find  that  in  most  instances  it  is  a  backward  people, 
and  often  what  we  call  a  savage  one.  Although  we  cannot 
range  all  peoples  into  a  sequence,  and  assert  that  one  tribe 
is  intermediate  in  culture  between  two  others,  or  that  a 
more  civilised  nation  has  passed  through  a  rigorously  defined 
order  of  evolution,  yet  we  may  hope  to  be  able  in  general 
terms  to  place  most  of  the  peoples  about  whom  we  have 
adequate  knowledge  in  certain  stages  of  culture,  and  we  may 
in  this  way  attempt  to  gain  some  idea  as  to  the  phases 
through  which  our  ancestors  have  passed.  The  comparative 
study  of  customs,  modes  of  thought,  and  religion,  has 
yielded  results  of  immense  importance  and  interest.  As  a 
method  of  inquiry  it  is  invaluable;  but  even  it  has  its  dan- 
gers, and  it  must  be  used  with  circumspection. 

The  second  psychical  probe  into  the  past  is  folk-lore. 
One  is  too  apt  to  dismiss  this  study  with  a  smile  of  derision 
as  being  concerned  with  ghosts,  fairy-tales,  and  old  wives' 
superstitions.  What  does  the  name  imply  ?  The  "  lore  of 
the  folk."  But  the  "  folk  "  bear  the  same  relation  to  edu- 
cated people  that  savages  do  to  civilised  communities.  They 
are  the  backward  people  among  ourselves.  The  same  value 
applies  to  the  study  of  their  actions  and  modes  of  thought 
as  to  the  investigation  of  savages.  But  folk-lore  is  the  in- 
vestigation of  psychical  survivals  within  a  more  or  less 
civilised  society,  and  thus  by  its  means  we  are  largely  en- 
abled to  study  the  practices  and  beliefs  of  our  forefathers, 
for  in  an  attenuated  form  many  of  these  actually  persist 
amongst  us.  By  appealing  to  comparative  custom  and  re- 
ligion we  can  often  form  a  pretty  good  idea  as  to  what  those 


XX  IN  TR  OD  UC  TION 

actions  really  signified,  and  so  we  can  recover  our  ancestral 
religions. 

The  materials  for  the  study  of  anthropology  are  as  nu- 
merous as  the  bodily,  mental,  and  moral  diversities  among 
mankind.  What  man  is,  what  he  thinks,  what  he  aspires 
after,  what  he  does — all  this  is  the  field  of  our  inquiry.  Our 
object  is  to  record  what  occurs,  and  to  discover  its  signifi- 
cance. These  two  aims  should  not  be  disassociated.  A 
considerable  amount  of  information  that  has  been  recorded 
in  the  past  is  comparatively  barren  because  the  significance 
of  it  was  not  understood  at  the  time.  Many  travellers  ap- 
pear to  be  quite  unaware  that  customs  and  beliefs,  the  form 
of  an  object  and  its  decoration,  may  have  a  meaning  that  is 
by  no  means  obvious.  Further,  it  is  only  on  the  spot  and 
from  the  people  themselves  that  this  significance  can  be  dis- 
covered ;  those  who  read  my  former  book  on  Evolution  in 
Art  will  clearly  see  the  importance  of  acquiring  local 
information. 

Now  is  the  time  to  record.  An  infinitude  has  been  irre- 
vocably lost,  a  very  great  deal  is  now  rapidly  disappearing ; 
thanks  to  colonisation,  trade,  and  missionary  enterprise, 
the  change  that  has  come  over  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
world  during  the  last  fifty  years  is  almost  incredible.  The 
same  can  also  be  said  of  Europe  and  of  our  own  country. 
Emigration  and  migration,  the  railway,  the  newspaper,  the 
Board  School — all  have  contributed  to  destroy  the  ancient 
landmarks  of  backward  culture.  The  most  interesting  ma- 
terials for  study  are  becoming  lost  to  us,  not  only  by  their 
disappearance,  but  by  the  apathy  of  those  who  should  de- 
light in  recording  them  before  they  have  become  lost  to 
sight  and  memory. 

Fruitful  study  results  only  from  those  facts  of  observation 
which  have  been  fertilised  by  the  mind  that  can  see  be- 
hind them.     Nothing  is  easier  than  to  burrow  among  de- 


IN  TR  OD  UC  TION  XX  i 

tails,  to  be  lost  among  a  multiplicity  of  facts,  and  to  be 
overwhelmed  by  a  mass  of  material. 

It  is  my  object  in  this  small  book  to  present  certain 
aspects  only  of  the  science  of  anthropology.  I  do  not  pre- 
tend to  give  an  abstract  of  anthropology,  nor  even  a  general 
idea  of  the  subject  as  a  whole.  But  we  will  make  several 
excursions,  as  it  were,  into  the  subject,  not  with  the  object 
of  attempting  to  learn  something  about  anthropology,  but 
in  order  to  see  what  anthropology  can  teach  us  about  our- 
selves. For,  after  all,  we  are  of  more  interest  to  ourselves 
than  any  study  can  be.  We  will  then  use  the  methods  of 
anthropology,  not  for  the  erection  of  an  academic  study,  but 
for  the  simple  purpose  of  explaining  ourselves  to  ourselves. 

Our  immediate  object,  then,  is  to  try  and  discover  what 
the  significance  is  of  certain  of  our  bodily  peculiarities,  and 
of  a  few  of  the  innumerable  objects  and  actions  that  we  see 
around  us. 

The  theory  of  evolution  throws  a  bright  and  far-reaching 
light  on  the  problems  of  anthropology,  and  though  we  may 
not  be  able  to  explain  the  processes  of,  or  the  reasons  for 
evolution,  there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  fact  of  its  occur- 
rence. There  is  no  need  to  explain  what  is  usually  under- 
stood by  evolution,  but  I  would  like  to  hint  at  some  of  the 
aspects  of  the  evolution  of  man. 

Speaking  in  general  terms,  the  structure  of  man  is  essen- 
tially similar  to  that  of  the  higher  apes.  The  differences 
may  be  superficially  striking,  but  the  resemblances  are 
fundamental.  The  disparity  is  patent  when  we  see  what 
man  can  do  with  his  mechanism  as  opposed  to  what  an 
ape  does  with  his,  but  we  must  not  forget  that  it  is  these 
apparently  slight  differences  of  structure  which  make  pos- 
sible the  vast  differences  of  functions ;  the  two  are  intimately 
bound  up  together,  and  so  it  is  not  wise  to  overlook  the 
differences  between  man  and  apes. 


xxii  INTRODUCTION 

The  akinship  then  of  man  and  living  apes  is  not  one  of 
direct  relationship,  but  of  common  descent.  It  is  constantly 
reiterated  in  books  that  the  lower  races  of  man  are  more 
simian  than  the  higher,  and  the  anatomical  differences  be- 
tween an  Australian  or  a  Negro  and  a  European  are  often 
described  as  "  low,"  or  "  high,"  as  the  case  may  be,  the 
"  low"  character  being  regarded  as  arrested  or  atavistic. 
This  generalisation  must  be  accepted  with  great  caution ; 
it  is  only  partially  true,  and  some  of  the  characters  on  which 
reliance  is  placed  may  prove  to  have  another  signification. 

The  three  great  groups  of  mankind — the  white,  yellow, 
and  black  races — are  probably  all  divergencies  from  the 
same  unknown  ancestral  stock.  They  have  severally  spe- 
cialised along  different  lines  of  evolution,  and  what  is  import- 
ant to  note  is  that  different  traits  of  their  organisation  have 
become  arrested,  or  have  specialised  in  different  degrees  and 
in  different  directions.  In  some  part  of  their  organisation 
each  of  these  groups  is  less  specialised  or  more  specialised 
than  the  other  two.  While  the  white  man  may,  for  example, 
be  nearer  the  ape  in  the  character  of  his  hair  than  the 
Mongol  or  the  Negro,  the  usual  short  body  and  long  legs  of 
the  latter  also  remove  him  farther  from  the  ape,  to  whom, 
in  this  respect,  the  other  groups  are  more  allied.  Of 
course  there  can  be  no  doubt  that,  on  the  whole,  the  white 
race  has  progressed  beyond  the  black  race. 

Stress  is  laid  by  evolutionists  on  the  resemblances  to  one 
another  of  the  young  of  different  divisions  of  the  same 
group,  and  this  is  an  argument  for  the  view  that  these  differ- 
ent classes  had  a  common  ancestry. 

The  same  holds  good  for  man.  The  infants  of  white, 
yellow,  brown,  red,  and  black  people  wonderfully  resemble 
one  another — both  as  to  form,  feature,  and  colour, — and  not 
only  so,  but  they  very  much  more  resemble  the  young  of 
the  higher  apes  than  do  their  respective  adults. 


INTRODUCTION  xxiii 

In  fact  it  could  be  argued,  with  some  show  of  plausibility, 
that  the  newly  born  infant  is  not  purely  human,  but  that  it 
rapidly  passes  through  a  pre-human  stage. 

An  English  baby  is  very  unlike  an  English  man ;  apart 
from  evolution  there  is  no  reason  why  their  bodily  propor- 
tions should  not  be  similar,  or  why  their  noses  should  be  so 
dissimilar.  It  is  a  very  significant  fact  that  among  the  pigmy 
peoples,  such  as  the  Andamanese  and  Bushmen,  we  find 
many  infantile  characteristics  persisting  in  the  adults,  and 
among  the  taller  races,  the  yellow  people  retain ^^Hbl  juve- 
nile characteristics.  Thus  we  find  that  a  peo^^riay  retain 
infantile  characteristics  in  some  respects  and  be  specialised 
in  others;  in  employing  the  term  "characteristics,"  I  do  not 
limit  myself  merely  to  physical  features,  but  include  mental 
and  moral  traits. 

Anthropology  also  recognises  the  vast  importance  of  the 
study  of  children.  Following  the  strictly  scientific  method 
we  thus  enter  the  sacred  precincts  of  the  nursery,  and  in- 
quire of  the  suckling  the  answer  to  one  of  the  most  moment- 
ous questions  man  can  ask,  "  Whence  are  we  ?  "  We  seek 
in  the  youngest  man  the  story  of  the  oldest  man,  and  en- 
deavour to  trace  in  the  evanescent  characteristics  of  earliest 
infancy  some  of  the  steps  through  which  man  has  climbed 
above  the  brute. 

From  the  nursery  we  pass  to  the  school  and  the  play- 
ground, endeavouring  to  discover  in  the  child  some  evidence 
as  to  the  direction  of  man's  upward  progress.  As  the  newly 
born  babe  reveals  to  us  the  last  traces  of  an  arboreal  ances- 
tor and  then  speedily  passes  into  human-kind,  so  the  child 
repeats  in  its  growth  the  savage  stage  from  which  civilised 
man  has  so  recently  emerged. 

In  subsequent  chapters  I  shall  refer  to  primitive  survivals 
in  child-life.  There  is  not  only  a  parallelism  to  some  extent 
in  physical  features  between  children  and  certain  savages, 


XXIV  INTRODUCTION 

but  there  is  in  children  a  persistence  of  savage  psychologi- 
cal habit,  and  in  the  singing  games  of  children  a  persistence 
of  savage  and  barbaric  practice.  The  courting,  marriage, 
and  funeral  ceremonies  of  our  savage  forefathers  are  re- 
peated like  a  faint  and  degraded  echo  in  village  green  or 
school  playground. 

We  leave  the  child  and  return  to  the  folk  whom  I  have 
already  denned  as  the  backward  people  among  ourselves, 
and  from  their  unwritten  sagas  and  stories,  their  customs 
and  beliefs,  we  can  pick  up  the  threads  that  have  been 
dropped  by  the  child.  In  certain  of  their  oral  traditions, 
especially  in  those  which  are  told  to  the  children,  we  find 
an  unmistakable  record  of  the  clash  of  opposing  races,  but 
of  a  time  long  antecedent  to  history.  In  some  of  our  fairy- 
tales we  can  recall  the  momentous  struggle  of  the  men  of 
the  Stone  Age  with  those  of  the  Age  of  Metals,  and,  in  addi- 
tion, we  can  catch  glimpses  of  the  culture,  habits,  and 
religion  of  neolithic  man. 

In  the  customs  and  beliefs  of  the  folk  may  still  be  traced 
many  survivals  of  the  pagan  observances  and  religion  of  our 
ancestors. 

In  the  life  of  the  cultured  European  from  his  earliest  in- 
fancy do  we  find  milestones  that  mark  the  rate  and  extent 
of  his  progress,  and  all  along  this  weary  road,^vhich  it  has 
taken  mankind  tens  of  thousands  of  years  to  traverse,  do  we 
find  the  tired  ones — the  laggards  in  the  race  of  life — who 
mutely  indicate,  if  we  have  but  discrimination  enough  to 
read  it,  a  record  of  the  painful  but  glorious  ascent  from  the 
brute  to  the  human. 

Wherever  man  is,  there  can  anthropology  be  studied. 
There  is  no  need  to  travel  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
earth ;  we  can  prosecute  researches  or  find  food  for  reflection 
in  our  own  nurseries,  in  the  playground,  on  the  village 
green,  even  in  our  cities. 


IN  TR  OD  UC  TION  XXV 

As  Alphonse  Karr  said  to  his  friend : 

"  Make  you  the  tour  of  the  world,  I  will  make  the  tour  of  my 
garden. 

"  What  are  you  going  to  see  abroad  ?  How  proud  you  will  be 
in  your  first  letter  to  tell  me  you  have  seen  women  tattooed  and 
painted  in  diverse  colours,  with  rings  in  their  noses. 

"  And  I  will  answer  you  :  '  Well,  my  good  friend,  what  occa- 
sion was  there  for  going  so  far  ?  Why  did  you  go  further  than 
two  streets  from  your  own  house  ?  There  was  nothing  to  prevent 
your  looking  at  your  sister-in-law,  who,  after  the  example  of  a 
hundred  other  women  you  are  acquainted  with,  puts  pearl  white 
and  rouge  upon  her  brow  and  cheeks,  black  upon  her  eyelids, 
blue  to  increase  the  apparent  fulness  of  her  veins,  and  passes 
rings  through  her  ears  in  the  same  manner  that  savage  women 
pass  them  through  their  noses.  Pray,  why  is  it  more  strange  to 
pierce  one  cartilage  than  another  ?  Can  the  difference  be  worth 
going  so  far  to  see  ? '  " 

So  writes  Alphonse  Karr,  and  this  is  the  true  spirit  of  the 
philosopher.1 

1  Alphonse  Karr,  A  Tour  round  my  Garden,  edited  by  Rev.  J.  G.  Wood. 
1865,  p.  9. 


THE  STUDY  OF  MAN 


CHAPTER  I 

MEASUREMENTS  AND   THEIR  IMPORTANCE 
IN  ANTHROPOLOGY 

NO  science  can  progress  or  be  definite  without  measure- 
ments of  one  sort  or  another.  What,  then,  are  those 
made  in  anthropological  inquiries,  and  for  what  purposes  are 
they  made  ? 

Speaking  generally,  we  may  roughly  class  anthropological 
measuring  into  three  groups: 

1.  As  a  means  of  analysis  and  classification. 

2.  As  a  test  of  efficiency. 

3.  For  identification  of  individuals. 

(1)  The  Identification  of  Criminals. — Let  us  commence 
with  the  least  important  from  a  scientific  point  of  view — 
that  for  the  recognition  of  individuals.  People  whom  it  is 
necessary  to  recognise  with  such  precision  are  generally 
those  who  are  wanted  by  the  police. 

Few  of  us  probably  have  ever  so  much  as  given  a  thought 
to  the  subject  of  the  identification  of  criminals,  but  a  little 
reflection  will  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  this  is  really  an 
important  problem.      In  this,  as  in  so  many  other  matters 


2  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

relating  to  criminology,  the  British  are  far  behind  some  for- 
eign nations. 

The  methods  hitherto  adopted  by  our  Government  have 
been  inadequate,  and,  consequently,  largely  ineffectual,  al- 
though a  very  successful  system  of  criminal  identification 
has  been  in  operation  in  France  for  a  dozen  years.  In 
1895,  however,  a  fresh  departure  was  made,  and  Dr.  Garson, 
the  wrell-known  anthropologist,  was  appointed  by  the  Gov- 
ernment to  take  charge  of  a  new  department  in  England  for 
the  identification  of  criminals. 

It  will  be  obvious  that  a  precise  method  of  identification 
not  only  expedites  justice  and  saves  expense,  but  at  the 
same  time  it  is  a  safeguard  to  the  prisoner,  preventing  him 
from  being  punished  for  the  crimes  of  others. 

The  identification  by  means  of  measurements  was  inaugu- 
rated in  Paris  towards  the  close  of  1882,  according  to  the 
methods  advocated  by  M.  Alphonse  Bertillon  in  1879. 
This  system  has  been  extended  to  the  whole  of  France  by 
M.  Herbette,  Director  of  the  Penitentiary  Department.1 

The  subject  we  are  about  to  consider  is  a  method  by 
which  habitual  criminals  may  be  recognised  who  give  a  false 
name  or  refuse  to  give  one  at  all. 

An  old  offender,  once  more  in  the  hands  of  the  law  for 
some  fresh  offence  that  he  has  committed,  has  every  reason 
for  wishing  to  conceal  his  real  name  or  the  name  under 
which  he  has  been  previously  convicted.  He  sometimes 
takes  the  name  of  a  person  who  has  never  been  accused  of 
any  offence.      He  thus  escapes  the  heavier  punishment  which 

1  Cf.  English  translation  of  an  address,  given  by  M.  Louis  Herbette,  at  the 
International  Penitentiary  Congress  at  Rome,  November,  1885,  Melun,  Ad- 
ministrative Printing,  1887  ;  also  A.  Bertillon,  "  Notice  sur  le  Fonctionnement 
du  Service  d'Identification  de  la  Prefecture  de  Police,"  Ann.  Stat,  de  la  Ville 
de  Paris,  1887  (1889) ;  and  F.  J.  Mouat,  "  Notes  on  M.  Bertillon's  Discourse 
on  the  Anthropometric  Measurement  of  Criminals,"  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xx., 
1890,  p.  182. 


MEASUREMENTS  AND  THEIR  IMPORTANCE  3 

usually  follows  a  second  conviction.  A  large  number  of 
these  professional  criminals  are  wanted  for  other  offences 
than  those  for  which  they  are  actually  in  custody,  or  they 
have  very  sufficient  reasons  for  thinking  that  they  are 
wanted  by  the  police  for  some  previous  offence  of  which 
they  have  been  guilty.  Criminals  do  not  scruple  to  inter- 
change names  amongst  themselves,  though  by  preference 
they  assume  those  of  honest  men ;  some  even  assume  the 
names  of  those  whom  they  have  at  some  previous  time 
robbed.  It  so  happens  that  in  France  criminals,  as  a  rule, 
no  longer  give  aliases,  but  are  eager  to  give  their  own  names, 
as  they  do  not  wish  to  appear  to  have  anything  to  hide. 
Further,  owing  to  the  certainty  of  this  method  of  identifica- 
tion, English  pickpockets  left  Paris  in  large  numbers,  so 
that  in  about  three  years  the  convictions  were  reduced  from 
sixty-five  to  nineteen.  Criminals  arrested  in  foreign  coun- 
tries have  still  greater  facilities  for  deceiving. 

The  usual  descriptions  which  generally  accompany  the 
international  exchange  of  judicial  records — "  chin  round, 
face  oval,  eyes  grey,"  etc. — have  never  led  to  the  recogni- 
tion of  criminals,  save  in  the  realms  of  romance. 

Photographs  are  certainly  preferable  to  descriptions  of 
any  kind,  but  photography  solves  only  a  part  of  our  prob- 
lem. The  experiment  tried  in  Paris  has  clearly  demon- 
strated this.  In  the  course  of  ten  years  the  police  made  a 
collection  of  the  photographs  of  100,000  persons.  Is  it 
possible  to  search  through  these  100,000  photographs  when- 
ever an  arrest  is  made  ?  Clearly  not.  But,  after  all,  the 
assistance  rendered  by  photography  is  very  small.  A  vast 
experience  in  human  physiognomy  is  required  to  recognise 
in  many  of  these  photographs  that  they  are  the  portrait  of 
the  same  person  taken  at  different  times  and  under  different 
conditions.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  photography  is  hardly  of 
any  use,  and  is  now  employed  in  Paris  only  as  a  subsidiary 


4  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

means  of  checking  other  methods  of  identification.  The 
photographs,  which  are  taken  full  face  and  profile,  are  the 
last  methods  employed. 

The  Bertillon  system  consists  in  measuring  the  length  of 
various  parts,  always  at  the  same  spot,  and  taken  in  a  regu- 
lar order.  These  are  in  the  order  of  their  importance:  (i) 
The  length  of  the  head ;  (2)  the  breadth  of  the  head ;  (3) 
the  length  of  the  middle  finger  of  the  left  hand;  (4)  the 
length  of  the  left  foot;  (5)  the  left  cubit,  i.  e.,  the  forearm 
and  extended  hand ;  (6)  the  length  of  the  little  finger  of  the 
left  hand;  (7)  the  length  of  the  right  ear;  (8)  the  stature. 
It  will  be  seen  that  most  of  the  above  are  practically  meas- 
urements of  parts  of  the  skeleton,  and  these  remain  constant 
when  full  growth  has  once  been  attained.  The  stature  is 
the  least  reliable  of  these  measurements.  Lastly,  the  colour 
of  the  eyes  is  noted,  and  any  individual  peculiarities,  such 
as  moles,  scars,  tattoo-marks,  and  the  like.  In  England  it 
has  been  decided  upon  to  utilise  finger-prints  according  to 
methods  introduced  by  Francis  Galton. 

All  the  measurements  are  divided  into  three  grades — 
long,  medium,  and  short.  The  limits  of  these  grades  have 
been  arbitrarily  chosen,  so  that  an  approximately  equal 
number  of  persons  will  be  distributed  among  the  three 
classes.  For  example,  the  length  of  the  head  is  divided 
into  those  that  measure  less  than  183  mm.  (millimetres), 
those  between  184  and  189  mm.,  and  those  over  193  mm. 

A  few  years  ago,  when  in  Paris,  I  was  introduced  to  M. 
Bertillon,  who  explained  his  system  to  me.  Although  the 
oflfice  was  officially  closed,  he  very  kindly  ordered  up  a 
thief  who  had  just  been  captured,  and  this  unfortunate  was 
made  the  subject  of  a  demonstration. 

First  of  all,  the  measurements  were  taken  according  to  the 
prescribed  method,  the  man  submitting  with  a  half-smile  of 
amusement.     The  length   of  his  head  was  189  mm.,  and, 


MEASUREMENTS  AND  THEIR  IMPORTANCE  5 

therefore,  just  within  the  middle  grade,  but  being  148  mm. 
broad  it  belonged  to  the  lowest  breadth  grade;  his  left 
middle  finger  measured  92  mm.  ;  the  left  foot,  259  mm.  ; 
the  left  cubit,  452  mm.  ;  and  so  on. 

The  cards  of  the  particulars  of  the  men,  women,  and 
children  are  kept  in  separate  presses.  The  attendant  then 
went  to  the  press  for  the  male  criminals  to  see  if  this  was 
an  old  offender.  The  press  is  divided  horizontally  into  three 
sections  for  head  lengths,  the  uppermost  being  for  the  small 
grades  and  the  lowest  for  the  longest  heads.  Each  of  these 
is  similarly  divided  vertically,  according  to  the  breadths  of 
the  head.  Thus  the  man  was  to  be  found  in  the  middle 
compartment  of  the  left-hand  series.  This,  like  the  other 
compartments,  is  divided  horizontally  into  three  series  for 
the  length  of  the  left  middle  ringer,  and  each  of  these  again, 
for  that  of  the  foot.  Lastly,  these  last  are  divided  verti- 
cally for  the  three  grades  of  the  left  cubit.  By  this  simple 
system  the  first  five  measurements  can  be  rapidly  classified 
into  243  divisions,  each  of  which  is  a  drawer.  When  the 
drawer  corresponding  to  the  thief's  measurements  was 
opened,  I  saw  that  it  was  further  subdivided  according  to 
other  measurements,  and  in  less  time  than  it  takes  to  de- 
scribe it  two  or  three  cards  were  taken  from  one  division. 
The  actual  figures  of  the  thief's  measurements  were  com- 
pared with  those  on  these  cards,  and  one  was  picked  out  on 
which  they  exactly  corresponded.  There  was  in  no  case  a 
difference  of  more  than  a  millimetre.  The  old  card  stated 
that  there  were  certain  scars  and  marks,  the  positions  of 
each  being  fixed  by  measurement  from  named  parts  of  the 
body.  On  examining  the  man,  these  were  found  to  corre- 
spond accurately.  The  photographs  which  were  appended 
to  the  old  card  were  kept  carefully  covered  up.  On  looking 
at  them  the  likeness  was  recognisable,  and  the  man  was  told 
the  name  he  had  formerly  given  as  his  own,  and  the  details 


6  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

of  his  previous  convictions.  The  demonstration  was  perfect, 
and,  to  do  our  criminal  friend  justice,  he  could  not  forbear 
from  smiling  at  the  celerity  and  neatness  of  the  identifica- 
tion. The  only  source  of  uncertainty  is  when  the  figures  lie 
just  on  a  border-line,  in  which  case  the  two  series  have  to  be 
examined. 

It  takes  two  minutes  to  completely  measure  one  individ- 
ual; the  record  of  the  scars,  particular  marks,  tattooing, 
etc.,  three  minutes;  the  writing  of  the  name,  age,  etc.,  ac- 
cording to  the  statement  of  the  subject,  two  minutes — or  a 
total  of  seven  minutes  for  the  whole  operation.  A  minute 
or  two  suffices  for  actual  identification  of  the  criminal,  sup- 
posing he  has  been  measured  before. 

The  beauty  of  this  system  is  its  absolute  certainty,  for 
everybody  has  some  particular  marks,  such  as  moles,  scars, 
etc.  Three  or  four  of  these,  if  actually  recorded,  would  be 
quite  enough  to  enable  a  man  to  be  identified  out  of  a  mil- 
lion. The  photograph  is  superfluous,  and  it  is  immaterial 
what  name  the  man  gives. 

This  system  of  identification  is  one  of  the  principal  appli- 
cations of  anthropology  and  its  methods  to  ordinary  life, 
and  its  utility  is  beyond  question. 

2.  Anthropological  Measurements  as  a  Test  of  Efficiency. — 
It  is  often  important  that  the  physical  fitness  of  people 
should  be  tested  in  order  to  see  how  they  stand  in  relation 
to  other  people,  and  to  discover  certain  physical  imperfec- 
tions. Apart  from  this  occasional  examination,  it  is  most 
desirable  periodically  to  "  take  stock  "  of  our  bodily  effi- 
ciency, in  order  to  see  whether  our  powers  are  becoming 
impaired  in  any  way,  and,  if  so,  to  take  precautions;  espe- 
cially important  is  this  in  the  case  of  children  and  young 
people  generally.  This  is  one  of  the  reasons  which  induced 
Dr.  Francis  Galton  to  establish  his  well-known  anthropo- 
metric laboratories. 


MEASUREMENTS  AND  THEIR   IMPORTANCE  J 

"  As  an  example  of  what  can  easily  be  done,  let  us  consider  the 
measurement  of  eyesight.  Measurement  would  give  an  indica- 
tion of  the  eyesight  becoming  less  good,  long  before  the  child 
would  find  it  out  for  himself,  or  before  its  impairment  could 
attract  the  observation  of  others.  It  is  frightful,"  writes  Dr. 
Francis  Galton,1  "  to  think  of  the  frequent  mischief  to  eyesight 
that  has  been  caused  by  the  neglect  at  schools  of  the  most  ele- 
mentary requisites  to  protect  it  from  unnecessary  strain,  such  as 
an  abundance  of  light  coming  from  the  proper  direction,  and 
desks  and  chairs  so  shaped  as  to  discourage  a  lolling  or  sidelong 
attitude,  by  supporting  the  book  and  paper  squarely  before  the 
reader.  The  stupid  want  of  care  in  providing  these  essentials  to 
eye-comfort  has  gone  far  towards  converting  the  educated  classes 
of  Germany  and  the  cultured  girls  of  England  into  short-sighted 
sections  of  society.  When  measurement  shows  that  the  sight  is 
beginning  to  be  slightly  impaired,  there  is  probably  time  to  hunt 
out  and  abolish  the  cause  of  the  mischief  before  serious  harm  is 
done,  and  an  occasional  small  fee  would  be  little  grudged  by 
most  persons  to  insure  so  timely  a  warning  of  danger." 

The  existence  of  colour-blindness  is  another  possibility 
well  worth  being  inquired  into  at  an  early  age,  as  it  materi- 
ally limits  the  choice  of  occupation.  '*  It  is  curious,"  writes 
Dr.  Galton,  "  how  late  it  may  be  in  life  before  this  remark- 
able defect  is  found  out  either  by  the  person  or  his  friends; 
and  as  it  affects  about  one  male  in  twenty-five,  the  risk  of 
being  subject  to  it  is  considerable." 

For  the  last  ten  years  there  has  been  an  anthropometrical 
laboratory  in  Cambridge,  during  which  time  a  very  large 
number  of  students  have  been  physically  tested,  and  as  the 
great  bulk  of  the  men  belong  to  the  same  social  grade,  we 
have  a  very  valuable  series  of  statistics  concerning  what  may 
be  called  the  professional  and  gentle  classes,  and  who  repre- 

1  F.  Galton,  "Why  do  we  Measure  Mankind?"  Lippincoti 's  Magazine, 
February,  1890. 


8  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

sent  as  good  a  type  physically  as  any  class  of  Englishmen 
under  existing  social  circumstances  can  be  expected  to  show. 
Some  years  ago  Dr.  Venn  worked  up  the  then  available 
statistics  on  over  iooo  men  in  an  interesting  paper  on 
"  Cambridge  Anthropometry,"  '  in  which  he  grouped  the 
students  into  three  classes : 

(A)  A  first-class  man  in  any  tripos  examination,  or  one 
who  is  a  scholar  of  his  college. 

(B)  All  the  remaining  "  honour  men." 

(C)  Candidates  for  the  ordinary  degree,  or  "  poll  men." 
Owing  to  the  system  of  examinations  in  Cambridge  and 

the  knowledge  of  the  men  by  their  tutors,  these  three  classes 
can  be  determined  with  great  accuracy,  even  in  the  case  of 
undergraduates. 

What  is  the  difference  in  the  physical  characteristics  of 
our  A,  B,  and  C  classes  ?  We  need  not  trouble  ourselves 
with  the  statistics  themselves,  but  merely  note  the  main 
results. 

In  respect  of  height,  weight,  breathing,  and  squeezing 
power,  there  is  little  or  no  difference  between  any  of  the 
classes. 

In  respect  of  eyesight  there  is  a  decided  inferiority  in  the 
A's,  as  compared  with  the  B's  and  C's  taken  together. 

In  respect  of  the  "  pull  "  a  similar  inferiority  of  A  to  B 
and  B  to  C  is  manifest. 

In  respect  of  head  measurement  there  is  a  decided 
superiority  of  A's  over  B's  and  B's  over  C's. 

Dr.  Galton,2  who  has  gone  with  more  detail  into  the  head 
growth  of  these  students,  says : 

"  We  find  that  a  '  high  honour '  man  possesses  at  the  age  of 
nineteen  a  distinctly  larger  brain  than  a  '  poll '  man  (that  is,  a 

1  Joum.  Anth.  Inst.,  xviii.,  1889,  p.  140. 

*  F.  Galton,  "  On  Head  Growth  in  Students  at  the  University  of  Cambridge," 
Nature,  May  3,  1888  ;   Joum.  Anth.  Inst.,  xviii.,  1889,  p.  155. 


MEASUREMENTS  AND    THEIR  IMPORTANCE 


student  who  takes  an  '  ordinary '  degree)  in  the  proportion  of  241 
to  230. 5, '  or  one  that  is  almost  5  per  cent,  larger.  By  the  end  of 
his  college  career  the  brain  of  the  '  high  honour  '  man  has  in- 
creased from  241  to  249,  that  is,  by  3  per  cent,  of  its  size  ;  while 
the  brain  of  the  'poll '  man  has  increased  from  230.5  to  244.5,  or 
6  per  cent. 

"  Four  conclusions  follow  from  all  this  : 

"  (1)  Although  it  is  pretty  well  ascertained  that  in  the  masses 
of  the  population  the  brain  ceases  to  grow  after  the  age  of  nine- 


?30 


240 


250 


AGES 
19 


25 AND* 

upwards; 


c 

B 

A 

1 
1 

\ 

\ 

\  1 

\ 

v 

»\ 

\ 

\ 

Fig.  1. 

Curves  of  Relative  Brain  Capacity  of  Cambridge  University  Men  ; 
after  Galton. 

A,  High  Honour  Men;  B,  Remaining  Honour  Men;  C,  Poll  Men.  The 
numerals  along  the  top  of  the  diagram  signify  the  product  of  the  three 
head  measures— length,  breadth,  and  height— in  inches. 

teen,  or  even  earlier,  it  is  by  no  means  so  with  university 
students. 

''  (2)  That  men  who  obtain  high  honours  have  had  considera- 
bly larger  brains  than  others  at  the  age  of  nineteen. 

"  (3)  That  they  have  larger  brains  than  others,  but  not  to  the 
same  extent,  at  the  age  of  twenty-five  ;  in  fact  their  predominance 
is  by  that  time  diminished  to  the  half  of  what  it  was. 

1  These  figures  are  arrived  at  by  multiplying  together  the  maximum  length 
and  breadth  of  the  head  and  its  height,  the  latter  being  taken  from  the  vertex 
to  a  plane  at  the  level  of  the  ear-holes. 


10  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  (4)  Consequently  '  high  honour '  men  are  presumably,  as  a 
class,  both  more  precocious  and  more  gifted  throughout  than  any 
others.  We  must,  therefore,  look  upon  eminent  university  suc- 
cess as  a  fortunate  combination  of  these  two  helpful  conditions." 

3.  Anthropological  Measurements  as  a  Means  of  Analysis 
and  Classification. — It  is  this  last  aspect  of  anthropological 
measurements  that  will  now  claim  our  attention.  These, 
combined  with  observations  on  the  colour  of  the  skin,  hair, 
and  eyes,  the  form  of  various  organs,  such  as  the  nose  and 
ears,  and  other  comparisons  of  a  similar  nature,  are  invalu- 
able in  the  study  of  the  races  of  mankind.  In  this  way  we 
analyse  the  components  of  a  mixed  people,  and  endeavour, 
as  it  were,  to  dissect  out  its  racial  elements.  At  the  same 
time  it  is  always  desirable  to  seek  for  peoples  that  have  re- 
mained approximately  pure,  so  as  to  fix  their  ethnic  type, 
which  will  serve  as  a  standard  when  gauging  mixtures.  For 
example,  in  a  certain  area  one  may  find  a  very  uniform 
people,  whom  we  know  by  history,  or  infer  by  other  means, 
to  have  long  remained  isolated ;  an  ethnographical  study  of 
this  group  reveals  a  certain  combination  of  characters,  which 
we  will  call  A.  Close  by  is  another  group  which  by  analy- 
sis resolves  itself  into  two  components,  and  contiguous 
are  others  somewhat  more  complex.  We  will  assume  that 
the  double  community  is  composed  of  B  and  C.  Whether 
the  more  complex  groups  are  composed  of  A  B  D,  A  C 
D,  or  any  other  combination  of  four  types,  it  should  be 
possible  to  determine  their  composition  from  the  experience 
gained  from  the  first  two  cases.  The  problem  is  naturally 
greatly  complicated  by  the  occurrence  of  all  intermediate 
grades  and  intermixtures,  for  it  is  only  exceptionally  that 
individuals  in  a  mixed  community  exhibit  even  approxi- 
mately pure  characters. 

In  the  following  three  chapters  I  take  respectively  the 
colour  of  the  hair  and  eyes,  the  form  of  the  head,  and  the 


MEASUREMENTS  AND  THEIR  IMPORTANCE  II 

character  of  the  nose  as  examples  of  the  methods  employed  ; 
and  lastly  I  present  an  abstract  of  the  brilliant  work  done 
by  Dr.  Collignon  in  his  studies  of  the  anthropology  of 
France,  whose  researches  constitute  a  highly  instructive 
example  of  the  modern  methods  of  anthropological  investi- 
gation. 


CHAPTER  II 

HAIR  AND  EYE  COLOUR 

WHEN  one  looks  at  a  crowd  of  Englishmen  one  is  at 
once  struck  with  the  diversity  that  is  apparent  in 
their  general  appearance ;  especially  noticeable  are  the  differ- 
ences in  the  colour  of  their  eyes  and  hair.  To  a  less  degree, 
the  same  holds  good  for  an  assembly  of  Scotsmen  or  Irish- 
men. In  some  parts  of  the  continent  of  Europe  there  is  a 
similar  variety  of  colour,  but  usually  a  more  uniform  colour- 
ation prevails. 

Outside  of  Europe,  and  apart  from  European  influence, 
there  is  a  remarkable  uniformity  in  the  colour  of  eyes  and 
hair;  and  whether  they  be  yellow,  red,  brown,  or  black 
men,  the  eyes  are  dark  and  the  hair  is  almost  invariably 
black. 

Our  venerable  and  venerated  English  anthropologist,  Dr. 
John  Beddoe,  long  ago  appreciated  the  fact  that  by  noting 
the  colour  of  the  eyes  and  hair  of  large  numbers  of  people 
it  might  be  possible  to  learn  something  about  the  origins  of 
a  people  so  mixed  as  the  English,  and  even  to  trace  the 
streams  of  migration  to  their  sources,  assuming,  of  course, 
that  originally  the  main  peoples  of  Europe  were  character- 
ised by  a  predominance  of  hair  and  eyes  of  a  particular 
colour. 

It  is  a  vital  question  in  anthropology  whether  races  or 
considerable  groups  of  men  who  may  be  regarded  as  being 

12 


HAIR  AND  EYE    COLOUR  1 3 

related  to  one  another,  do  possess  physical  characters  in 
common,  and  whether  these  characters  are  constant. 

Apart  from  the  monuments  of  Egypt  and  Assyria  there 
are  few  pictorial  representations  of  ancient  peoples  which 
are  of  sufficient  exactitude  to  serve  as  conclusive  evidence 
on  these  points. 

In  Egypt  there  is  an  immense  mass  of  pictorial  and  sculp- 
tured material  for  ethnographical  study  covering  a  range  of 
many  centuries.  Over  three  thousand  years  ago  the  artists 
who  decorated  the  royal  tombs  distinguished  between  four 
races:  (1)  the  Egyptians,  whom  they  painted  red;  (2)  the 
Asiatics  or  Semites  were  coloured  yellow;  (3)  the  Southerns 
or  Negroes  were  naturally  painted  black;  and  (4)  the  West- 
erns or  Northerners  white. 

I.  Like  every  other  people  under  the  sun,  the  Egyptians 
regarded  themselves  as  the  race  of  men.  They  are  distin- 
guishable by  their  warm  complexion,  their  small  beard  and 
moustache,  and  their  abundant  crisp  black  hair.  All  Egypt- 
ologists agree  that  this  ancient  type  is  still  represented  by 
the  modern  Fellahin,  sometimes  with  remarkable  fidelity. 

Maspero  '  writes : 

"  The  profile  copied  from  a  Theban  mummy  taken  at  hazard 
from  a  necropolis  of  the  XVIIIth  Dynasty,  and  compared  with 
the  likeness  of  a  modern  Luxor  peasant,  would  almost  pass  for 
a  family  portrait.  Wandering  Bisharis  have  inherited  the  type 
of  face  of  a  great  noble,  the  contemporary  of  Kheops  ;  and  any 
peasant  woman  of  the  Delta  may  bear  upon  her  shoulders  the 
head  of  a  Xllth  Dynasty  king.  A  citizen  of  Cairo,  gazing  with 
wonder  at  the  statues  of  Khafra  or  of  Seti  I.  in  the  Ghizeh 
Museum,  is  .himself,  at  a  distance  of  fifty  centuries,  the  repro- 
duction, feature  for  feature,  of  those  ancient  Pharaohs." 

1  G.  Maspero,  The  Dawn  of  Civilisation  :  Egypt  and  Chaldea.  Eng.  trans., 
1894,  p.  48. 


14  THE    STUDY  OF  MAN 

Dr.  R.  Stuart  Poole  J  points  out  that  two  other  nations 
come  under  the  Egyptian  type. 

(a)  The  old  Kushite  (that  is  the  East  African  Hamitic) 
inhabitants  of  South  Arabia  and  of  the  opposite  coast  of 
Africa,  who  traded  with  the  Egyptians,  and  whose  features 
were  less  refined  than  those  of  the  Egyptians.  Representa- 
tions of  these  people  are  shown  in  the  reliefs  which  com- 
memorate the  expedition  of  Queen  Hatshepu,  about  1600 
B.C.  The  voyagers  travelled  beyond  the  Red  Sea  as  far  as 
the  Somali  coast. 

(b)  The  Phoenicians  can  only  be  distinguished  from  the 
Egyptians  by  details  of  costume. 

2.  Some  of  the  Eastern  types,  which  may  generally  be 
classed  as  Semitic,  on  the  Egyptian  monuments  show  a 
strong  likeness  to  the  Assyrians  as  sculptured  by  them- 
selves. Jews,  Amorites,  Arabs,  and  other  tribes,  with 
characteristic  features  and  costume,  are  also  unmistakably 
portrayed. 

3.  The  peoples  of  Africa  to  the  west  of  Egypt  were 
grouped  by  the  Egyptians  with  those  of  the  islands  and 
maritime  countries.  These  include,  amongst  others,  the 
Tahennu,  Ha-neb-u,  Lebu,  Mashuash,  Tsekuri,  Shardana, 
Shakalsha,  Tuirsha  of  the  sea  Dardani,  and  Pulista. 

A  very  characteristic  representation  of  one  of  these  groups 
is  that  of  a  Tahennu,  or  Tamehu,  a  Lybian  people.  This 
man  has  two  ostrich  feathers  as  a  head-dress;  he  wears  a 
short  beard  and  moustache,  and  a  curious  curled  lock  of  hair 
which  depends  in  front  of  each  ear.  These  fair-haired, 
blue-eyed  strangers,  with  a  light  complexion,  frequently 
came  into  contact  with  the  Egyptians.  Sometimes  they 
were  enslaved,  as  shown  in  the  tomb  of  Rekhmara,  in  the 
time  of  Thothmes  III.  ;  or  others  of  the  same  race  actually 

1  Reginald  Stuart  Poole,  "The  Egyptian  Classification  of  the  Races  of  Man." 
— Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xvi.,  1887,  pp.  152,  370. 


HAIR  AND  EYE    COLOUR  1 5 

conquered  and  temporarily  occupied  part  of  Egypt,  as  evi- 
denced by  Flinders  Petrie's  "  New  Race." 

The  Shardana  or  Shardina  were  the  Sardinians  ;  the  Shak- 
alsha  were  the  Sikeli  or  Sicilians;  the  Tuirsha  have  been 
identified  as  the  Tyrsenoi  or  Etruscans;  and  the  Pulista  are 
generally  regarded  as  the  Philistines,  though  some  regard 
them  as  Pelasgians  of  Crete,  both  of  which  belonged  to  the 
same  race. 

This  northern  group  of  white  men  coincides  to  a  remark- 
able degree  of  accuracy  with  the  latest  anthropological  in- 
vestigations of  Professor  Sergi,1  who  recognises  a  distinct 
group  of  the  white  race,  which  he  appropriately  terms  the 
Mediterranean  stock.  Almost  the  only  point  of  difference 
between  the  ethnological  artists  of  ancient  Egypt  and  the 
enthusiastic  Italian  anthropologist,  is  that  the  latter  in- 
cludes the  ancient  Egyptians  themselves  in  that  important 
group  of  mankind. 

4.  The  Egyptians  also  depicted  negroes  of  various  de- 
grees of  purity,  and  which  evidently  belonged  to  recognised 
nationalities. 

Other  races  and  peoples  were  noted  by  the  Egyptians. 
Of  these  mention  need  only  be  made  of  the  Hyksos  or  so- 
called  Shepherd  Kings.'  The  best  representation  of  this 
type  is  in  one  of  the  sphinxes,  discovered  at  Zoan  or  Tanis. 
They  had  strongly  marked  features,  with  large  brow-ridges, 
very  high  and  broad  cheek-bones,  and  a  flat  mouth.  Their 
face,  so  full  of  energy,  firmness,  and  resolution,  forms,  as 
Poole  remarks,  the  greatest  contrast  with  the  air  of  calm  re- 
pose and  placid  dignity  peculiar  to  the  old  Egyptian  kings. 
These  foreign  over-lords  conquered  Egypt  before  2000  B.C., 

1  G.  Sergi,  Origine  e  Diffusione  della  Stirpe  Mediterranean  1S95. 

2  It  would  be  preferable  to  adopt  Dr.  F.  Galton's  suggestion,  and  use  the 
word  "  herdsmen  "  instead  of  "  shepherds  "  in  connection  with  the  Hyksos. — 
Joum.  Anth.  Inst.,  xix. ,  p.  194. 


l6  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

and  were  expelled  four  hundred  years  later.  Sir  William 
Flower  !  has  noted  Mongolian  characters  in  their  features, 
and  suggests  that  the  invasion  and  occupation  of  Egypt  by 
the  so-called  "  Shepherds  "  was  one  of  the  numerous  in- 
stances in  which  some  of  the  nomadic  Tatar  hordes  of  Cen- 
tral and  Northern  Asia  have  poured  forth  from  their  native 
lands,  and  overrun  and  occupied  for  a  longer  or  shorter 
period  the  countries  lying  to  the  west  and  south  of  them. 
If  this  view  can  be  maintained,  the  Hyksos  invasion  and 
occupation  of  Egypt  would  have  been  only  one  of  the  series, 
of  which  the  conquests  of  Attila,  Tchinghis  Khan,  Timur, 
and  the  more  permanent  settlements  of  the  Finns,  the  Mag- 
yar, and  the  Turks  in  Europe  are  well-known  examples. 

As  Dr.  Poole  points  out  in  considering  the  representations 
from  the  monuments,  we  must  remember  three  leading 
characteristics  of  Egyptian  art : 

i.  That  in  reliefs  and  frescos  the  eye  was  represented 
full  face,  and  therefore  we  have  to  make  allowance  for  this 
peculiarity  in  our  attempt  to  define  types.  This  done,  and 
the  comparison  made  with  sculptures  in  the  round,  of  which 
we  had  examples  of  some  leading  types,  we  found : 

2.  Remarkable  naturalness  and  force  of  character,  remind- 
ing us  of  early  Italian  sculpture,  leading  to : 

3.  Love  of  caricature  in  its  portrayal  of  hostile  nations, 
for  which  again  allowance  must  be  made. 

But  even  making  full  allowance  for  all  these,  we  need  not 
be  afraid  of  trusting  the  Egyptian  artist. 

The  sculptures  from  Assyria  and  Babylon  can  also  be 
brought  into  evidence  to  support  the  general  conclusions 
drawn  from  those  of  Egypt.  According  to  Bertin,2  they  are 
more  realistic  in  many  ways  than  the   Egyptian  pictures, 

1  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xvi.,  p.  377. 

"2G.  Bertin,  "The  Races  of  the  Babylonian  Empire."— Ibid.,  1888,  p. 
104. 


HAIR  AND  EYE    COLOUR  \J 

though  they  are  also  more  conventional  in  some  points.  As 
in  Egypt,  so  here,  the  faces  are  represented  in  profile  with 
eyes  in  full  face.  This  has  given  the  false  notion  of 
oblique  eyes  in  the  Babylonian  race,  but  the  error  of  this 
notion  is  easily  shown  by  the  faces  of  the  man-headed  bulls 
and  the  few  Assyrian  statues.  The  artists  appear  to  have 
given  great  care  to  the  representations  of  the  facial  types. 

In  Assyria,  Bertin  finds  two  types:  (i)  The  aristocratic 
and  military  caste,  with  a  long  head,  straight  forehead, 
slightly  curved  nose  hanging  a  little  over  the  upper  lip,  and 
often  thin  lips ;  the  hair  was  wavy.  (2)  The  lower  classes, 
with  a  small  round  head,  low  retreating  forehead,  high 
cheek-bones,  projecting  jaws,  but  with  a  receding  chin;  the 
nose  is  often  very  large  and  prominent,  generally  frizzly  hair 
and  beard,  and  of  short  stature. 

The  higher  Babylonian  class  was  not  very  dissimilar  from 
the  Assyrian,  but  the  nose  was  straight,  never  aquiline,  and 
the  general  expression  of  the  face  was  quiet  and  smiling, 
well  in  agreement  with  the  general  moral  character  of  the 
Babylonians;  it  has  nothing  of  the  stern  expression  of  the 
Ninevites. 

The  Assyrians  correctly  represented  the  Arabs  with  a 
long  oval  head,  high  forehead,  and  a  straight  nose  of 
moderate   size. 

The  reliefs  of  the  two  ambassadors  who  visited  Assurban- 
ipal,  in  Elam,  offer  all  the  characteristics  noticed  in  the 
modern  Armenians — long  curved  nose,  fleshy  lips,  short 
stature.  The  general  appearance  is  decidedly  Jewish,  as  in 
the  modern  Armenians.  This  fixity  of  the  pre-Aryan 
Armenian  type  is  fully  acknowledged  by  anthropologists. 

Two  types  of  Jews  have  been  distinguished :  (1)  The  high 
type — with  the  characteristic  "  Jewish  "  nose,  which  is 
sometimes  called  the  Semitic  type,  but  erroneously,  as  the 
purest  Semites,  the  Arabians  of  the  desert,  do  not  exhibit 


1 8  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

it.  The  face  of  this  type  has  an  intelligent  and  dignified 
appearance.  (2)  The  low  type,  as  illustrated,  according  to 
Bertin,  by  the  Jews  captured  at  Lachish  by  Sennacherib, 
701  B.C.,  and  by  the  Phoenician  sailors  on  a  bas-relief  in  the 
British  Museum.  The  head^  is  round,  the  forehead  low  and 
retreating,  but  the  nose  is  rarely  much  developed ;  in  many 
cases  the  lips  are  thick,  the  hair  frizzly,  and  the  stature  of 
the  medium.  This  type,  which  may  be  due  to  a  mixture 
with  the  same  race  as  that  which  formed  the  low  type  of 
Mesopotamia,  still  sometimes  recurs  among  the  Ashkenazim 
(German-Polish)  division  of  the  Jewish  race. 

The  persistency  of  the  Jewish  type  is  admitted  on  all 
hands,  as  Goethe  stated  this  well-recognised  fact  in  the 
following  words:  "  Es  ist  das  beharrlichste  Volk  der  Erde. 
Es  ist,  es  war,  es  wird  sein."  Joseph  Jacobs,  who  has 
made  an  elaborate  study  of  Jewish  anthropology,  states1 
that  the  persistency  of  the  Jewish  type  for  the  last  2600 
years  is  conclusively  proved  by  the  Assyrian  bas-relief  of 
the  captive  Jews  of  Lachish. 

Without  going  into  further  detail  or  multiplying  refer- 
ences, it  may  be  accepted  that  where  a  people,  like  the 
Jews,  has  kept  itself  fairly  pure,  and  not  intermarried  to 
any  considerable  extent  with  peoples  of  alien  blood,  the 
ethnical  characters  may  persist  for  some  3000  years.  It  is 
true  that  Renan,  Neubauer,2  and  others  have  argued  against 
the  purity  of  the  present-day  Jews,  but  Jacobs  traverses 
their  arguments  and  arrives  at  opposite  conclusions.  He 
draws  attention  to  the  comparative  infertility  of  mixed  mar- 
riages, that  is,  between  Jews  and  Gentiles,  and  to  the 
superior  potency  of  Jewish  blood.     Taking  these  facts  into 

1  Joseph  Jacobs,  "  On  the  Racial  Characteristics  of  Modern  Jews." — yourn. 
Anth.  Inst.,  xv.,  1885,  P-  39- 

2  A.  Neubauer,  "  Notes  on  the  Race-Types  of  the  Jews."  —  Ibid., 
p.  17. 


HAIR   AiVD  EYE   COLOUR 


consideration  along  with  the  very  small  number  of  mixed 
marriages  in  the  past,  especially  with  non-Semitic  peoples, 
Jacobs  sees  "  no  reason  from  history  for  denying  that  the 
Jews  of  the  present  day  were  the  direct  descendants  of 
the  Jews  of  the  Bible."1 

There  are  undoubted  wide  divergencies  from  the  Jewish 
type  of  skull,  nose,  eyes,  hair,  etc.  ;  but  the  Rev.  Dr.  Her- 
mann Adler,  the  Chief  Rabbi,  believes  2  that  the  dark  and 
blond  type  are  original,  dating  from  Bible  times,  and  de- 
scribed respectively:  "  His  locks  are  curling,  and  black  as  a 
raven  "  (Canticles  v.,  u),  and  "  He  was  ruddy,  and  withal 
fair  of  eyes  and  goodly  to  look  upon  "  (i  Samuel  xvi.,  12). 
That  the  existence  of  the  blond  type  was  not  due  to  inter- 
marriage since  Biblical  times  might  be  proved  by  the  fact 
that  it  was  to  be  found  among  the  Jews  of  North  Africa, 
Syria,  Arabia,  and  Persia,  where,  owing  to  the  prevalence 
of  fanaticism,  mixed  marriages  had  rarely,  if  ever,  taken 
place. 

Dr.  Felix  von  Luschan,3  who  has  paid  considerable  atten- 
tion to  the  problem  of  the  origin  of  the  Jews,  states  that  the 
modern  Bedouins  must  be  considered  as  pure  descendants 
of  the  old  Semitic  race.  They  have  long,  narrow  heads, 
dark  complexion,  and  a  short,  narrow,  and  straight  nose, 
which  is  in  every  respect  the  direct  opposite  of  what  we  are 
accustomed  to  call  a  "  typical  Jewish  nose."  The  earliest 
Phoenician  skulls  seem  identical  with  old  and  modern 
Bedouin  skulls.  Of  our  modern  Jews  nearly  fifty  per  cent, 
are  broad-headed  (brachycephalic),  eleven  per  cent,  have  fair 
complexion,  and  not  more  than  five  per  cent,  correspond  to 
what  we  now  learn  to  be  the  real  old  Semitic  type.  In 
Northern  Syria,  the  land  of  the  old  Aramaeans,  nearly  all 

1  Loc.  cit. ,  p.  62. 

2  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xv. ,  p.  56. 

3  Felix  von  Luschan,  "  Jews  and  Hittites." — Science,  xxiii.,  1894,  p.  21. 


20  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

the  heads  are  brachycephalic,  with  indices  near  to  90,  and 
these  same  brachycephalic  elements  we  find  everywhere  in 
Western  Asia.  The  Armenians  are  most  remarkable  for 
the  nearly  complete  uniformity  of  their  types,  for  their  dark 
complexion,  their  extreme  brachycephalism,  and  for  their 
Large  and  hooked  "  Jewish  "  nose. 

These  and  other  investigations  lead  us  to  the  conviction 
that  Syria  and  Asia  Minor  were  in  early  times  inhabited  by 
a  homogeneous  and  extremely  brachycephalic  race,  of 
which  the  modern  Armenians  are  the  nearly  pure  descend- 
ants, and  which  we  find  more  or  less  mixed  with  strange 
elements  in  many  of  the  other  races  that  now  inhabit  West- 
ern Asia.  This  old  brachycephalic  race,  which  from  its  be- 
ginning was  utterly  distinct  from  any  Semitic  tribe,  and  was 
in  its  physical  aspect  the  very  opposite  of  the  Semites,  can 
be  identified,  according  to  Von  Luschan,  only  with  the 
Hittites  (the  same  Hittites  mentioned  as  a  Syrian  tribe  in 
the  Bible),  who  had  been  a  strong  and  formidable  enemy 
to  Ramses  II.,  and  were  finally  conquered  by  Assyrian 
kings  in  long  wars  and  fights,  beginning  earlier  than  the 
times  of  Assurnassirpal  and  ending  probably  only  in  those  of 
Esarhaddon,  as  we  read  in  the  Assyrian  annals  from  the 
ninth  century  to  the  seventh  century  B.C.  Excavations 
made  a  few  years  ago  in  Sendjirli,  the  old  Sammal,  known 
in  Assyrian  texts  as  a  Hittite  residence  in  Northern  Syria, 
have  brought  to  light  a  large  series  of  old  Hittite  sculptures ; 
the  Armenian  character  of  the  men  represented  on  the  walls 
and  in  the  royal  palaces  of  this  old  town  is  most  striking, 
and  we  cannot  err  if  we  regard  the  inhabitants  of  Sammal 
as  the  direct  ancestors  of  the  modern  Armenians,  who  still 
inhabit  the  neighbourhood  of  the  place,  ill-treated  in  our 
times  by  Turks  and  Kurds,  and  without  any  knowledge  of 
their  glorious  history  in  ancient  and  mediaeval  times. 

The  old  Hittite  inscriptions  were  in  very  curious,  heavy, 


HAIR  AND  EYE    COLOUR  21 

and  bulky-looking  kind  of  hieroglyphics,  but  about  iooo  B.C. 
the  Semitic  writing  and  language  was  introduced,  which 
soon  replaced  the  Hittite  language  and  writing.  For  ex- 
ample, two  inscriptions  have  been  found,  written  by  native 
kings,  the  one  in  the  ninth,  the  other  in  the  eighth  century 
B.C.,    both    in    good    old    Semitic    alphabetical   characters. 

Thus,  in  the  ninth  century  B.C.  Semitic  influence  was 
great  in  Northern  Syria,  and  we  can  easily  understand  how 
Semitic  writing  and  language  soon  became  dominant  among 
people  of  Western  Asia  that  were  originally  without  a  drop 
of  Semitic  blood ;  and  then  we  understand  also  why  most 
of  our  modern  Jews  have  the  Armenian  type  and  not  the 
Semitic. 

The  fair  element  among  the  modern  Jews  is  best  explained 
by  an  old,  as  opposed  to  a  post-biblical  racial  mixture. 
This  we  may  find  in  the  intercourse  of  the  old  native  Syrians 
with  the  Amorites  and  other  Canaanites  (Deut.  ix.,  2),  ''  a 
people  great  and  tall,"  who  were  fair  and  had  blue  eyes,  as 
the  old  Egyptian  painted  monuments  show  us.  These  are 
the  eastern  representatives  of  the  great  Mediterranean  race. 

Von  Luschan  thus  sums  up  his  conclusions:  "  So  we  see 
in  our  modern  Jews  the  descendants  of  three  different  races, 
the  Hittites,  the  Amorites,  and  the  Semitic  nomads,  who 
immigrated  into  Syria  only  about  in  the  times  of  Abraham." 

Much  has  been  written  upon  the  prevalence  of  red  hair 
among  the  Jews.  Jacobs  '  finds  that  it  occurs  among  Sep- 
hardim  (Spanish  Jews)  to  a  greater  extent  than  among  Ash- 
kenazim  (German-Polish  Jews),  and  it  has  never  been 
contended  that  the  Sephardim  have  mixed  much  with  any 
race  markedly  rufous,  though  a  certain  amount  of  erythrism 
(or  red-hairiness)  was  introduced  into  Spain  by  the  Goths. 
Where  it  does  occur  among  Ashkenazim  of  North  Europe  it 
is  found  more  among  Jews  than  in  the  indigenous  popula- 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  46. 


22  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

tion.  Jacobs  points  out  that  red  hair  seems  to  be  only  a 
natural  complement  to  black,  and  its  presence  among  Jews 
is  not  due  to  intermixture,  but  probably  to  defective  nutri- 
tion. 

The  existence  of  blue  eyes  among  Jews  in  relatively  large 
proportions  need  not  be  regarded  as  overwhelming  proofs  of 
intermixture.  As  is  well  known,  all  eyes  are  blue  at  birth, 
and  if  no  brown  pigment  is  deposited  in  the  front  of  the  iris 
the  eyes  remain  bluish  to  the  end  of  life. 

Thus  blue  eyes,  as  well  as  red  hair,  are  a  kind  of  minor 
albinism,  and  may  result  from  defective  nutrition,  or  other 
physiological  causes.  Jacobs  finds '  confirmation  in  the 
view  that  this  is  the  real  cause  of  its  occurrence  among 
Jews  from  the  fact  that  we  find  blue  eyes  among  Asiatic  as 
well  as  European  Jews.  On  the  other  hand,  this  would  be 
equally  well  accounted  for  by  an  infusion  of  Amoritic  blood. 

We  may  then  accept  the  conclusion  that  the  Jews  have 
remained  a  persistent  type  for  thousands  of  years,  and  that 
though  they  do  now  present  variations  in  their  features, 
these  are  due  not  so  much  to  subsequent  miscegenation  as 
to  a  primitive  complexity  of  origin,  as  is  partly  evidenced 
by  the  Assyrian  reliefs. 

As  the  result  of  long  experience  Beddoe  a  has  come  to 
estimate  very  highly  the  permanence  of  the  colours  of  hair 
and  eyes.  "  It  is,"  as  he  justly  states,  "  of  course  impos- 
sible for  an  evolutionist  to  regard  them  as  absolutely  per- 
manent. But  one  may  readily  conceive,  as  I  do,  that 
whenever  a  distinct  and  tolerably  homogeneous  breed  has 
been  established,  its  colour  may  remain  very  much  the 
same  so  long  as  the  conditions  of  natural  selection  remain 
nearly  identical. "  The  material  to  be  worked  upon,  as  he 
points  out,  lies  ready  to  hand  in  our  streets  and  market 
places,  not  hidden  in  museums  and  charnel  houses. 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  47.  2John  Beddoe,  The  Races  of  Britain,  1885,  p.  2. 


HAIR   AND  EYE   COLOUR 


23 


An  obvious  objection  to  such  observations  is  the  different 
way  in  which  people  see  colours  or  are  impressed  by  them. 
To  take  an  example  adduced  by  Beddoe :  almost  all  French 
anthropologists  say  that  the  majority  of  persons  in  the  north 
of  France  are  blond,  whereas  almost  all  Englishmen  would 
say  they  were  dark ;  each  group  of  observers  setting  up  as  a 
standard  what  they  are  accustomed  to  see  around  them  when 
at  home.  What  is  darkish  brown  to  most  Englishmen  would 
be  chestnut  in  the  nomenclature  of  most  Parisians,  and  per- 
haps even  blond  in  that  of  Auvergne  or  Provence.  Then, 
again,  most  people  exaggerate  the  relative  prevalence  of 
some  striking  feature,  such  as  red  hair. 

It  has  been  attempted  to  obviate  the  discrepancies  due  to 
national  idiosyncrasy  or  to  personal  equation  as  to  the  dis- 
crimination of  colours  by  printing  tints  for  comparison. 
These  colour-scales  are  very  useful  for  determining  the  hues 
of  the  skin,  and  also,  though  to  a  less  extent,  for  the  colours 
of  the  iris;  but  they  are  of  comparatively  little  use  for 
recording  the  tints  of  the  hair,  as  the  scales  are  printed  in 
flat  tints,  so  different  from  the  gloss  and  translucency  of 
hair. 

French  anthropologists  have,  however,  worked  very 
largely  with  such  colour-scales,  and  a  limited  number  are 
printed  in  that  valuable  little  book,  Notes  and  Queries  on 
Anthropology,  published  by  the  Anthropological  Institute 
(3  Hanover  Square,  London,  W.). 

With  that  practicality  which  characterises  his  methods, 
Dr.  Beddoe  has  devised  a  very  simple  method  of  recording 
the  colours  of  the  hair  and  eyes  of  people.  The  advantages 
of  his  system  are  that  it  is  accurate  as  need  be,  easy  and 
rapid  to  operate,  and  it  can  be  employed  without  attracting 
any  attention. 

Dr.  Beddoe  l  acknowledges  three  classes  of  eyes,  distin- 

1  The  Races  of  Britain,  p.  3. 


24  THE    STUDY  OF  MAN 

guished  as  much  by  shade  as  by  colour — light,  intermediate, 
and  dark. 

i.  To  the  first  class  are  assigned  all  blue,  bluish-grey,  and 
light  grey  eyes. 

2.  To  the  second  or  medium  class  belong  dark  grey, 
brownish  grey,  very  light  hazel  or  yellow,  hazel-grey,  formed 
by  streaks  of  orange  radiating  into  a  bluish-grey  field,  and 
most  shades  of  green,  together  with  all  the  eyes  whose 
colour  is  uncertain  after  an  ordinarily  close  inspection. 

3.  To  the  third  class  are  allocated  the  so-called  black 
eyes,  and  those  usually  called  brown  and  dark  hazel. 

The  hair  colours  are  classed  according  to  the  same  observ- 
er into  groups,  which  he  distinguishes  by  the  following 
initials,  R.,  F.,  B.,  D.,  N. 

Class  R.  (red)  includes  all  shades  which  approach  more 
nearly  to  red  than  to  brown,  yellow,  or  flaxen. 

Class  F.  (fair)  includes  flaxen,  yellow,  golden,  some  of  the 
lightest  shades  of  our  brown,  and  some  pale  auburns,  in 
which  the  red  hue  is  not  very  conspicuous. 

Class  B.  (brown)  includes  numerous  shades  of  brown. 

Class  D.  (dark)  includes  the  deeper  shades  of  brown  up 
to  black. 

Class  N.  (niger)  includes  not  only  the  jet  black,  which  has 
retained  the  same  colour  from  childhood,  and  is  generally 
very  coarse  and  hard,  but  also  that  very  intense  brown 
which  occurs  to  people  who  in  childhood  have  had  dark 
brown  (or  in  some  cases  deep  red)  hair,  but  which  in  the 
adult  cannot  be  distinguished  from  coal  black,  except  in  a 
good  light. 

The  card  adopted  by  Beddoe  will  be  found  to  be  very 
practical.  It  may  be  made  of  any  size,  but  it  is  convenient 
to  have  it  about  i\  inches  long  by  \\  inches  broad,  so  that 
it  may  be  held  in  the  palm  of  the  hand  and  carried  in  the 
waistcoat  pocket. 


HAIR  AND  EYE   COLOUR 


25 


R 

F 

B 

D 

N 

R 

F 

B 

D 

N 

R 

F 

B 

D 

N 

The  card  is  ruled  into  three  main  divisions  corresponding 
to  the  groups  of  eye-colours — light,  medium,  dark.  Each 
of  these  is  again  subdivided  into  columns  for  the  five  classes 
of  hair:  red,  fair,  brown,  dark,  and  black.  Lastly,  the  card 
is  divided  horizontally  through  the  centre,  the  upper  being 
reserved  for  statistics  of  men,  and  the  lower  for  those  of 
women. 

A  second  card  should  be  similarly  used  for  children. 
Those  about  the  age  of  eighteen  and  over  may  be  classed  as 
adults. 

The  locality,  date,  name  of  observer,  and  other  details, 
such  as  the  particular  occasion,  may  be  written  on  the  back, 
but  it  is  convenient  to  leave  a  blank  space  on  the  face  for 
the  insertion  of  the  name  of  the  locality.  Further  sugges- 
tions for  the  employment  of  these  cards  will  be  found  at  the 
end  of  the  book  in  the  chapter  devoted  to  practical  observa- 
tions in  the  field. 

A  ready  means  for  comparing  the  colours  of  different 
peoples  is  obtained  by  the  Index  of  Nigrescence,1  which 
Beddoe  has  introduced. 


"  The  gross  index  is  gotten  by  subtracting  the  number  of  red 
and  fair-haired  persons  from  that  of  the  dark-haired,  together 
with  twice  the  black-haired.     The  black  is  doubled,  in  order  to 
1  Races  of  Britain,  p.  5. 


26  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

give  its  proper  value  to  the  greater  tendency  to  melanosity  shown 
thereby ;  while  brown  [chestnut]  hair  is  regarded  as  neutral, 
though  in  truth  most  of  the  persons  placed  in  B  are  fair-skinned, 
and  approach  more  nearly  in  aspect  to  the  xanthous  [light]  than 
to  the  melanous  [dark]  variety." 

The  formula  is : 

D  +  2N-R-F=:  Index. 

From  the  gross  index  the  net,  or  percentage  index,  is  of 
course  readily  obtained. 

It  is  evident  that  the  light  colours  range  below  and  the 
dark  above  zero,  and  that  the  fairer  the  population  the 
greater  will  be  the  minus  quantity. 

The  index  for  the  eyes  is  obtained  by  subtracting  the 
light  from  the  dark  and  neglecting  the  neutral  shades,  thus : 

Dark  —  Light  =  Index. 

Dr.  Collignon  adopts  another  plan :  he  reduces  all  his 
figures  to  percentages;  then  for  any  given  district  he  adds 
the  light  hair  and  the  light  eyes  together,  and  does  the  same 
with  the  dark  hair  and  eyes,  dividing  each  total  by  two. 
Lastly,  he  constructs  maps  to  show  the  relative  excess  of 
one  total  over  the  other. 

In  that  mine  of  information,  The  Races  of  Britain'  Bed- 
doe  has  published  a  series  of  maps,  which  he  has  constructed 
from  statistics  based  upon  about  13,800  entries  in  the  H?ie 
and  Cry,  relating  to  deserters  from  the  army,  and  to  a  much 
smaller  extent,  deserters  from  the  navy  and  absentees  from 
militia  drill.  Through  the  kindness  of  my  friend  I  am  able 
to  reproduce  three  of  these  maps,  which  set  forth  the  broad 
features  of  the  distribution  of  the  hair-  and  eye-colours  of 
the  male  population  of  England.  Dr.  Beddoe  has  made, 
in  addition,  a  vast  number  of  observations  of  this  class,  and 

1  P.  143,  et  seq. 


HAIR  AND  EYE    COLOUR 


27 


he    finds   that    his  data  coincide  very  fairly  well  with  the 
military  statistics.     The  personal  investigations  of  Beddoe 


Fig.  2. 

Map  Showing  the  Distribution  of  the  Index  of  Nigrescence  in  England, 

Based  upon  Military  Schedules  ;  after  Beddoe. 


28 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


afford  a  more  accurate  and  minute  means  of  analysis,  and 
they  bring  out  a  number  of  very  suggestive  facts  that  are 
lost  in  the  synthetic  maps  based  on  the  military  schedules. 

The  maps  based  on  the  military  schedules  accord  with 
ethnological  history  in  exhibiting  a  large  proportion  of  light- 
coloured  hair  in  the  regions  most  subject  to  invasion  and 
colonisation  and  of  dark-coloured  hair  in  the  far  west. 

Taking  the  four  kingdoms,  their  order  from  light  to  dark 
is  as  follows : 


EYES.  PER  CENT. 

Scotland 72.2 

Ireland 70.2 

England 61.6 

Wales 56.6 


HAIR.  INDEX  OF 

NIGRESCENCE. 

Scotland 3.1 

England 5.6 

Wales 16.8 

Ireland 18.8 


Connaught  (with  70.6  per  cent.)  ranks  second  to  Ulster 
(with  73.4  per  cent.)  as  to  lightness  of  eyes,  and  has  more 
dark  hair  than  any  province  of  Ireland  or  of  Great  Britain 
except  Argyle.  This  is  in  agreement  with  the  feature  that 
strikes  travellers  in  the  west  of  Ireland,  the  preponderance 
of  dark  brown  hair  combined  with  grey  or  blue-grey  eyes.1 

In  England  most  of  the  "  mixed  brown  type,"  as  it  is 
called — that  is,  brown,  hazel,  or  "  black  "  eyes,  with  brown 
(chestnut),  dark  brown,  or  black  hair — occurs  in  Dorset, 
Wilts,  Cornwall,  Gloucestershire,  the  Welsh  Marches,  South 
Wales,  Bucks,  and  Herts. 

For  the  sake  of  clearness  I  will  take  a  few  counties  of 
England  only,  and  give  the  conclusions  to  which  Dr.  Bed- 
doe  has  arrived  from  his  studies  of  their  ethnography. 

"Lincolnshire,  for  example,  is  supposed  to  be  a  particularly 
Teutonic  county.     Whether  Lindum  Colonia  was  destroyed  by 

1  Cf.  a  paper  recently  published  by  Dr.  Beddoe  "  On  Complexional  Differ- 
ences between  the  Irish  with  Indigenous  and  Exotic  Surnames." — Journ, 
Anth.  Inst.,  xxvii.,  1897,  p.  164. 


HAIR  AND  EYE   COLOUR 


29 


the  Angles  we  do  not  know  ;  perhaps,  as  it  kept  its  name  and 
situation,  it  fared  better  than  most  Romano-British  towns   and 


-25 

25  + 

33  + 

if 

40  + 

Fig.  3. 

Map  Showing  the  Distribution  of  Dark  (Brown  or  Hazel)  Eyes  in  England, 

Based  upon  Military  Schedules  ;  after  Beddoe. 


30 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


retained  more  of  its  ancient  population  ;  but  certainly  Lincoln- 
shire received  a  large  colony  of  Angles,  who  divided  it  into  a 


Fig.  4. 

Map  Showing  the  Distribution  of  the  Excess  of  Pure  Blond  over  Pure  Dark 

Type  in  England,  Based  upon  Military  Schedules  ;  after  Beddoe. 


HAIR  AND  EYE   COLOUR  i{ 

great  number  of  hundreds,  and  who  were  subsequently  overlaid 
by  a  heavy  stratum  of  Danes,  as  the  place-names  testify.  The 
inhabitants  have  the  tall  and  bulky  frame  which  is  generally 
believed  to  be  Anglo-Danish,  though  the  nature  of  the  soil  and 
other  conditions  may  have  to  do  with  it.  Lincolnshire  stands 
third  in  all  England  on  the  blond  scale  as  tested  by  the  index  of 
nigrescence." ' 

Dr.  Beddoe's  personal  observations  in  the  county  indicate 
a  moderate  proportion  of  dark  eyes  and  a  great  deal  of  light, 
or  lightish  brown  hair,  with  a  low  index  of  nigrescence ; 
these  observations  are  confirmed  respectively  by  the  maps 
(Figs.  2  and  3).  The  modern  population  of  Lincoln  are  a 
fair  and  handsome  people,  with  regular  features;  blue-eyed, 
says  Professor  Phillips — but  Dr.  Beddoe  calls  them  blue  or 
light  hazel;  the  latter  hue  is  very  common  at  Boston.  The 
civic  population  there,  though  not  quite  so  strikingly  fair  as 
in  the  surrounding  peasantry,  are  much  more  so  than  in 
most  parts  of  the  islands;  they  have  all  the  characteristics 
of  pure  Saxo-Frisians,  and  are  hardly  distinguishable  from 
the  frequenters  of  Antwerp  market.2  Their  index  of  nigres- 
cence is  the  lowest  Dr.  Beddoe  has  met  with  in  any  con- 
siderable town  in  Britain. 

From  Lincoln  to  Nottingham,  along  the  Vale  of  the 
Trent,  the  same  breed  of  men  prevails.  Mr.  D.  Mackin- 
tosh, who  has  carefully  studied  the  features,  makes  the 
leading  points  of  his  Danish  type  a  long  face,  high  cheek- 
bones, with  a  sudden  sinking-in  above  on  each  side  of  the 
forehead,  high  and  long  nose,  head  elevated  behind,  reddish 
hair.  There  is  a  traditional  attribution  of  red  hair  to  the 
old  Danish  invaders  in  some  parts  of  the  country,  but  Dr. 
Beddoe  does  not  believe  "  the  colour  is  common  in  Lincoln- 
shire nowadays.  The  highx  finely-formed  nose  and  prom- 
inence   of    the   superciliary   ridges,   yet  with  fairly  arched 

1  Races  of  Britain,  p.  145.  2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  252. 


32 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


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HAIR  AND  EYE   COLOUR 


33 


brows,  not  the  straight  penthouse  of  the  Scotch  and  Irish, 
are  frequently  seen  in  Denmark ;  and  where  they  are  very 
prevalent  among  the  Anglians  a  Danish  cross  may  be  sus- 
pected." '  Mr.  Park  Harrison  lays  great  stress  upon  this 
feature  as  Danish.  It  is  common  to  the  Borreby  race  and 
to  the  British  bronze  men,  to  the  Sion  type  of  Switzerland, 
and  to  many  Savoyards. 

Leicestershire  was  largely  colonised  by  the  Danes;  Rut- 
land was  not  so.  The  former  differs  from  the  other  North- 
Midland  counties,  apparently,  by  having  retained  a  good 
proportion  of  the  dark  pre-Anglian  stock. 

In  the  Triads,  and  elsewhere  in  old  Welsh  literature  the 
Coranied  are  referred  to.     These  have  been 

"  identified  with  the  Coritavi,  or  Coritani,  of  the  Romans,  from 
the  similarity  of  the  first  syllable  in  each  word,  from  a  statement 
that  the  Coranied  settled  about  the  Humber,  and  from  the  name 
of  Ratis  Corion  having  been  applied  to  Leicester,  seemingly  the 
chief  town  of  the  Coritavi.  The  only  grounds  for  making  the 
Coranied  and  Coritavi  (allowing  them  to  be  the  same)  Germans 
are  their  siding  with  the  Saxons,  and  having  a  Latin  name  end- 
ing in  avi,  like  the  undoubtedly  Germanic  tribes  of  the  Batavi 
and  Chamavi."  2 

Dr.  Beddoe  entirely  disagrees  with  this  view  for  the  fol- 
lowing reasons : 

14  They  are  supposed  to  have  occupied  the  counties  of  Lincoln, 
Nottingham,  Derby,  Leicester,  Rutland,  and  part  of  Northamp- 
tonshire; in  these  counties  I  can  find  no  Roman  station  whose 
name  appears  to  be  Teutonic,  while  the  important  town  of  Mar- 
gidunum,  near  Southwell  in  Nottinghamshire,  bears  a  name 
almost  certainly  Celtic,  and  Ratis  Corion  does  the  same;  and 
Nottingham  would  seem  to  have  remained  Celtic  long  enough 
for  its  Welsh  name  not  to  have  been  altogether  forgotten  even  in 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  253.  ■  Loc.  cit.,  p.  23. 

3 


34  THE    STUDY  OF  MAN 

the  time  of  Alfred,  for  Asser  says  it  was  called  in  Welsh  Tig- 
guocobauc.  Again,  if  the  Coritavi  were  Germans,  and  were 
overlaid  by  successive  strata  of  Angles  and  Danes,  one  may 
reasonably  expect  to  find  the  Teutonic  physical  type  prevalent 
over  their  whole  area  to  a  degree  not  found  elsewhere  in  Britain. 
Now,  in  the  northern  part  of  the  Coritanian  area  it  is  really  very 
prevalent,  but  in  the  southern  (Leicestershire  and  Northampton- 
shire) there  is,  if  I  may  judge  by  the  colours  of  the  hair  and  eyes, 
a  strong  non-Teutonic  element.  The  following  table  (page  35) 
shows  a  great  difference  between  Lincoln  and  Leicester,  Notting- 
ham and  Northampton,  in  these  respects,  there  being  a  much 
larger  proportion  of  dark  hair  in  the  two  more  southern  towns.  ' 

"  Professor  Phillips,  than  whom  no  ethnologist  was  a  keener 
observer,  once  visited  Leicester  with  the  expectation  of  finding 
a  strongly  marked  Scandinavian  type  predominant  there;  but 
he  was  surprised  to  find  a  dark-haired  type,  which  he  supposed 
to  be  Celtic,  equally  prevalent." 

The  northern  part  of  Cambridgeshire  is  also  supposed  to 
retain  a  large  proportion  of  British  blood ;  the  fens  formed 
the  impenetrable  retreat,  and  we  all  know  how  the  Isle 
of  Ely  held  out  against  the  Normans.  In  his  memoir  on 
4 '  Stature  and  Bulk  of  Man  in  the  British  Isles, ' '  Dr.  Beddoe a 
quotes  Dr.  L.  Clapham  and  Dr.  H.  Stuckey,  as  finding 
rather  more  hazel  and  brown  than  blue  or  grey  eyes ;  out 
of  fifty  observations  twenty-seven  eyes  were  dark  and 
twenty-three  light.  I  remember  well,  on  returning  to  Cam- 
bridge after  a  long  residence  in  Ireland,  expecting  to  find  a 
tall,  fair-haired,  blue-eyed  population  preponderating  in 
Cambridgeshire,  but,  on  the  contrary,  I  was  struck  with  the 
proportionately  large  number  of  short,  dark-haired,  dark- 
eyed  persons.  According  to  Dr.  Beddoe  the  southern  part 
of  the  country  is  more  like  Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  anthropo- 
logically.3 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  24.  2  Mem.  Anthrop.  Soc,  iii.,  1869,  pp.  458,  459. 

3  Races  of  Britain,  p.  254. 


HAIR  AND  EYE   COLOUR 


33 


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36  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  These  two  counties,"  continues  Dr.  Beddoe,  "  are  more 
Anglian  than  either  Danish  or  British.  Mr.  Grant  Allen, 
whose  summary  of  the  Brito-Saxon  controversy,  in  his  excellent 
little  book  on  Anglo-Saxon  Britain,  is  about  the  fairest  we  have, 
dwells,  perhaps,  a  little  too  much  on  the  British  element  in  East 
Anglia.  It  is,  perhaps,  stronger  in  Suffolk  than  in  Norfolk.  In 
Essex  I  think  that  there  was  a  considerable  survival  of  the  Romano- 
Britons,  and  that  though  the  invading  Saxons  preponderate  near 
the  coast,  it  is  not  so  in  the  interior  forest  country.  At  Braintree 
a  Huguenot  colony  have  left  their  surnames  and  complexions."  1 

Mr.  Park  Harrison  has  noted  that  the  people  of  Brandon 
are  comparatively  dark.  This  is  a  particularly  interesting 
place,  as  in  Neolithic  times  pits  were  sunk  in  the  chalk,  and 
flint  was  quarried  for  the  manufacture  of  implements ;  there 
is  reason  to  believe  that  since  that  date  this  industry  has 
never  ceased,  and  at  the  present  time  the  flint  knappers  of 
Brandon  manufacture  gun-flints  for  the  African  market. 
Quite  recently  Dr.  C.  S.  Myers  has  published  a  valuable 
paper a  on  the  large  collection  of  skulls  from  this  locality 
that  are  in  the  Cambridge  Anatomical  Museum.  In  the 
vicinity  are  two  Roman  camps,  and  near  by  runs  the  Ick- 
nield  Way,  the  great  war  and  trade  route  of  the  Iceni  in  pre- 
Roman  times.  A  few  skulls  resemble  the  Neolithic  or  Long 
Barrow  type.  The  skulls  of  the  brachycephalic  series  do 
not  belong  to  the  Round  Barrow  type,  which  is  quite  unre- 
presented, but  are  to  be  allocated  to  a  fairly  widely-spread 
Romano-British  type.  Among  the  elongated  skulls  Mr. 
Myers  has  proved  the  occurrence  of  the  old  Row  Grave 
type  of  Germany ;  it  is  a  significant  fact  that  about  372  A.D. 
the  Alemannic  Bucinobantes  came  from  Mainz,  on  the  right 
bank  of  the  Rhine,  and  appear  to  have  settled  within  twenty 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  254. 

1  C.  S.  Myers,  "An  Account  of  Some  Skulls  Discovered  at  Brandon,  Suffolk." 
— Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xxvi.,  1896,  p.  113. 


HAIR  AND  EYE   COLOUR  37 

miles  of  Brandon,  at  Buckenham,  in  Norfolk.  Allied  to 
these  skulls  is  the  long,  low-crowned  Batavian  type,  which 
also  occurs  at  Brandon.  Only  one  definitely  Saxon  skull 
was  noted.  The  evidence  points  to  the  fact  that  the  burial- 
ground,  whence  these  skulls  were  obtained,  was  that  of  a 
people  of  mixed  ethnic  character,  belonging  to  a  time  ante- 
cedent to  the  Saxon  invasion ;  but  it  is  probable  that  even 
then  Saxon  settlers  were  arriving  in  small  numbers.  Mr. 
R.  J.  Horton-Smith  '  also  alludes  to  East  Anglian  craniology 
in  his  paper  on  the  craniology  of  the  South  Saxons.  His 
main  points  are  that  the  South  Saxons  were  not  an  abso- 
lutely pure  race,  they  had  a  little  British  blood  in  them, 
though  the  amount  was  probably  very  small.  The  Wessex 
Saxons  were  less  pure  than  the  South  Saxons,  owing  to 
their  more  frequent  intermarriage  with  the  British  popula- 
tion. The  East  Anglians  have  a  form  of  skull  slightly 
different  to  that  of  the  South  Saxons.  It  is  rather  broader, 
less  tapeinocephalic  (z.  e.,  less  low  in  the  crown),  and  meso- 
seme  instead  of  microseme  (t.  e.,  the  orbits  are  higher  and 
less  oblong) ;  the  face  is  also  relatively  longer,  and  the  cranial 
capacity  larger. 

We  will  now  pass  to  the  opposite  end  of  England,  and 
again  I  quote  from  Dr.  Beddoe : 

"  The  people  of  Devon  are  for  the  most  part  dark-haired,  and 
the  Gaelic  combination  of  blue  or  grey  eyes,  with  dark  brown  or 
blackish  hair,  is  very  frequent  among  them.  When  the  eyes  are 
hazel,  on  the  other  hand,  the  hair  is  not  seldom  lightish.  In  the 
district  about  Dartmouth,  where  the  Celtic  language  lingered  for 
centuries,  the  index  of  nigrescence  is  at  its  maximum,  exceeding 
fifty.  But  around  the  estuaries  of  the  Taw,  the  Torridge,  the 
Tamar,  and  perhaps  the  Exe,  Frisian,  or  Danish  settlements  seem 

1  R.  J.  Horton-Smith,  "  The  Cranial  Characteristics  of  the  South  Saxons 
compared  with  those  of  the  other  races  of  South  Britain. "—Journ.  Anth.  Inst.% 
xxvi.,  1896,  p.  82. 


38  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

to  have  been  effected.  In  these  localities  there  is  a  large  pro- 
portion of  blonds,  which  in  the  case  of  Plymouth  affects  the 
neighbouring  part  of  Cornwall  to  some  extent.  The  Devonians 
are  usually  rather  short  and  strongly  made,  with  heads  of  good 
size  and  considerable  occipital  projection. 

"  Cornwall  nourishes  a  stalwart  race  superior  to  the  Devonians 
in  stature  and  length  of  limb;  the  miners,  again,  seem  to  surpass 
the  agricultural  population,  though  of  this  I  have  not  statistical 
proof.  In  each  case  there  may  have  been  a  process  of  selection, 
for  Cornwall  probably  gave  the  last  refuge  to  the  free  British 
warriors,  who  were  gradually  forced  back  by  the  West  Saxons 
into  the  peninsula,  while  their  serfs,  accustomed  to  the  yoke,  may 
have  bowed  their  necks  for  the  most  part  to  that  of  the  strangers. 
The  stature,  as  deduced  by  Roberts  and  Rawson  from  305  ob- 
servations, is  5  ft.  7.9  in.  or  1726  mm.,  and  I  do  not  think  this 
is  over  the  mark.  The  Cornish  are  generally  dark  in  hair,  and 
often  in  eye;  they  are  decidedly  the  darkest  people  in  England 
proper;  they  resemble  the  Scottish  Highlanders  in  their  warmth 
of  colouring.  The  point  which  comes  out  most  distinctly  is  the 
prominence  of  the  glabella,  and  (probably  also)  of  the  brow 
ridges.  To  these  may  be  added,  more  doubtfully,  a  receding 
forehead,  a  head  much  arched  longitudinally,  and  broad  about 
the  parietal  eminences.  All  these  points,  it  will  be  observed, 
are  common  to  the  Bronze  Race.  All  the  British  types,  how- 
ever, occur  in  Cornwall,  and  the  most  characteristic  is,  I  think, 
Iberian,  with  a  dash  of  the  Semitic.  Barnard  Davis  was  struck 
with  the  heaviness  of  the  mouth  and  lower  part  of  the  nose; 
this  is  a  common  feature  among  the  earlier  races  of  Britain,  but 
is  certainly  not  universal  in  Cornwall."  ' 

The  map  of  the  nigrescence  index  shows  that  the  majority 
of  dark-haired  people  occur  in  our  western  districts.  Corn- 
wall, for  example,  has  the  highest  index  (20.6),  but  even 
there  there  are  18.6  per  cent,  of  the  men  of  the  pure 
blond  type  (including  red  hair),  and  but  24.6  per  cent,  of 

1  Loc.  cit.,  pp.  258,  259. 


HAIR   AND  EYE   COLOUR 


39 


the  pure  brown  type,  the  great  bulk  of  the  population  be- 
longing to  the  mixed  blond  type  or  the  mixed  brown  type. 

The  following  conclusions  may  be  drawn  from  this  short 
sketch  of  the  distribution  of  hair  and  eye  colours  in  the 
Eastern  Counties,  and  in  the  extreme  south-west  of  England. 

Spread  all  over  England  was  a  dark-haired,  brown-eyed 
people,  who,  from  other  evidence,  appear  to  have  been 
slight  of  build,  and  distinctly  dolichocephalic.  These  are 
usually  spoken  of  as  Iberians,  or  more  correctly  as  the  Ibe- 
rian branch  of  the  Mediterranean  race.  They  are  the  men 
of  the  polished  stone  (Neolithic)  age,  and  they  often  buried 
their  dead  in  long  barrows.  We  may  recognise  in  them  the 
true  autocthones  of  Britain,  for  we  have  little  precise  in- 
formation about  Palaeolithic  man,  nor  can  we  yet  tell  how 
far  he  persisted  into  later  periods.  Mr.  Gomme  '  brings 
evidence  to  bear  in  support  of  his  view  that  these  non-Aryan 
people  were  agriculturalists. 

We  know  that  agriculture  tends  of  itself  to  fix  men  to 
the  soil,  and  when  agriculturalists  are  conquered  by  peoples 
of  other  social  organisation,  as  practically  always  occurs, 
they  become  still  more  rooted,  and  for  good  reason.  The 
conquerors  are  usually  turbulent,  warlike,  mobile  communi- 
ties, usually  either  actual  nomads  or  societies  which  have 
but  recently  emerged  from  a  pastoral  mode  of  life,  or  they 
may  be  a  seafaring  folk.  In  any  case,  while  they  prey  upon 
the  settled  population  and  overlord  them,  they  take  care 
not  to  exterminate  them,  for  the  descendants  of  herdsmen 
despise  agriculture,  and  it  is  only  after  a  long  time  and  due 
to  a  powerful  constraint  that  they  yield  to  the  force  of  cir- 
cumstances and  till  the  soil. 

The  horse-breeding,  chariot  -  driving,  Celtic  -  speaking 
peoples  who  invaded  the  British  Islands  were  probably  no 

1  G.  L.  Gomme,  The  Village  Community,  i8go,  eh.  iv.  ;  Ethnology  in  Folk- 
lore,  1892,  p.  70. 


40  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

exception  to  this  general  rule.  It  is  certain  that  they  tilled 
the  soil,  for  there  are  many  allusions  in  Roman  authors  to 
this  practice  among  allied  tribes  on  the  mainland  of  Europe; 
but  the  same  authors  are  careful  to  point  out  how  lightly 
these  half-nomad  tribes  were  attached  to  the  soil,  and  how 
they  were  continually  on  the  move.  We  may  therefore 
take  it  for  granted  that  these  men  of  the  Bronze  Age  over- 
lorded, but  did  not  by  any  means  exterminate  the  indige- 
nous population  of  Britain ;  the  latter  by  becoming  the  serfs 
of  the  conquerors  were  still  more  firmly  settled  on  the  land. 

Later  came  the  tall,  fair-haired,  blue-eyed,  dolichocephals. 
At  first  pioneers  opened  up  the  country  and  showed  the 
way  to  the  Teutonic  hordes,  who  arrived  in  various  swarms 
of  Frisians,  Angles,  Saxons,  Jutes,  Danes,  and  the  kindred 
Norsemen.  The  story  of  the  incoming  of  the  Bronze  Age 
was  repeated,  but  with  this  difference.  While  the  fair  doli- 
chocephals slipped  over,  as  it  were,  the  dark  dolichocephalic 
serfs,  they  largely  exterminated  or  pushed  before  them  the 
Celtic,  more  or  less  brachiocephalic  peoples,  so  that  these 
are  at  the  present  day  mainly  to  be  found  in  the  western 
portions  of  the  country.  The  mixed  race  probably  shared 
the  fate  of  the  more  aboriginal  population. 

In  a  recently  published  book,1  on  the  Formation  of  the 
French  Nation,  De  Mortillet  points  out  that  various  classical 
authors  practically  all  agree  in  describing  the  Celts  or  Gauls 
and  the  Germans  in  the  same  terms.  Tall,  fair  people,  with 
blue  eyes,  white  skin,  very  warlike,  and  readily  undertaking 
great  invasions  and  vast  migrations,  constructing  neither 
temples  nor  towns,  fighting  naked,  but  very  proud  of  their 
hair.  Below  this  military  aristocracy  there  were  the  com- 
mon people,  ignored  by  the  writers,  who  constituted  the 
patient  and  laborious  democracy  fixed  to  the  soil,  the  true 
natives  of  the  country,  whom  anthropology  and  palethnol- 

1  G.  de  Mortillet,  Formation  de  la  Nation  Francaise,  Paris,  1897. 


HAIR  AND  EYE   COLOUR  41 

ogy  have  revealed.  The  Gallo-Germanic  race  is  spread  over 
nearly  the  whole  of  Europe,  and  extends  into  Africa  and 
Asia,  each  band  transporting  its  particular  name  to  the  dif- 
ferent countries  that  it  occupied.  It  is  this  turbulent,  noisy, 
mobile  aristocracy  which  alone  has  filled  the  pages  of  history. 
In  France  the  short,  dark,  brachycephal  of  Southern  Central 
Europe  has  fused  with,  or  lived  alongside  of,  the  dark  doli- 
chocephal,  and  it  is  this  mixture  which  has  formed  the  mass 
of  the  French  people,  that  sedentary  population  which  may 
be  described  as  the  nucleus  of  the  French  democracy. 

Although  not  identically  the  same,  the  early  history  of 
France  and  that  of  the  British  Islands  have  much  in  com- 
mon, and  it  is  interesting  to  find  that  these  primitive  ethnic 
movements  are  still  painted,  as  it  were,  on  the  hair  and  in 
the  eyes  of  the  existing  population. 

On  turning  to  France  we  find  that  analogous  results  have 
there  been  tabulated.  Topinard,  the  distinguished  anthro- 
pologist, instituted  a  very  extensive  inquiry  relative  to  the 
statistical  distribution  of  the  colours  of  the  hair  and  eyes 
of  the  adult  population  of  France. 

In  order  to  obtain  unity  of  method,  and  to  reduce  the 
personal  equation  to  a  minimum,  Topinard  issued  precise 
instructions  with  colour-scales,  which  were  scattered  broad- 
cast, but  mainly  to  trained  observers,  preferably  to  medical 
men.  More  than  200,000  observations  were  returned ;  these 
were  abstracted  one  by  one,  and  classified  by  departments 
according  to  place  of  birth.  The  first  operation  was  to  re- 
duce the  totals  of  each  kind  of  hair  and  eyes  to  the  percent- 
age of  the  whole  number  of  the  cases  observed  for  each 
department.  The  second  operation  was  to  arrange  the 
most  blond  to  the  darkest  departments  for  both  hair  and 
eyes,  in  a  long  list  from  one  to  eighty-eight.  The  third 
operation  was  to  combine  these  lists  in  various  ways,  so  as 
to  determine  the  relative  places  occupied  by  each  depart- 


42  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

ment  with  regard  to  the  eyes  and  hair  separately.  The 
fourth  operation  was  to  again  combine  these  results,  so  as 
to  arrive  at  the  main  synthetic  conclusions.  There  only 
remained  to  establish  equal  groupings,  and  to  plot  out  the 
maps  according  to  these  lists.  Topinard  informs  us  1  that 
he  employed  various  methods  till  he  finally  drew  up  twenty- 
one  maps  presenting  all  the  main  facts,  from  the  simplest, 
giving  the  distribution  of  blue  eyes,  for  example,  to  the 
most  synthetic  which  combined  all  the  observations.  Five 
of  these  maps  were  originally  published  in  his  report  to  the 
meeting  of  the  French  Association  for  the  Advancement  of 
Science,  which  was  held  in  Paris  in  1889.2  My  learned  col- 
league has  kindly  permitted  me  to  borrow  the  three  that  he 
has  also  published  in  his  U  Homme  dans  la  Nature. 

The  eighty-eight  departments,  including  Alsace-Lorraine 
and  Corsica,  are  divided  into  four  groups  of  twenty-two  de- 
partments each.  The  groups  indicate  the  fair,  intermediate 
fair,  intermediate  dark,  and  dark,  whether  of  eyes,  of  hair, 
or  of  both  combined. 

The  line  of  separation  between  the  departments  where  the 
blonds  predominate,  and  those  which  have  a  preponderance 
of  darks,  extends  irregularly  from  the  Alps  to  the  Breton 
peninsula.  This  line  also  corresponds  with  a  fair  degree  of 
accuracy  to  that  which  separates  the  people  of  high  stature 
from  those  of  low  stature,  the  former  being  to  the  north- 
east, the  latter  to  the  south-west. 

The  maximum  of  frequency  of  blonds  is  met  with  partly 
along  the  shores  of  the  English  Channel  and  partly  along 
the  north-east  frontier.     This  fact  coincides  with  history. 

1  P.  Topinard,  V Homme  dans  la  Nature,  1891,  p.  83. 

2  P.  Topinard,  "  Statistique  de  la  Couleur  des  Yeux  et  des  CheveuK  en 
France." — Assoc.  Francaise  pour  VAvance.  des  Sci.,  Paris,  1889  (1890),  2nde 
Parte,  p.  615. 


HAIR  AND   EYE   COLOUR 


43 


One  knows  that  the  blonds  came  by  sea  and  by  land,  but 
always  from  the  north.  It  is  also  in  agreement  with  the 
colour-maps  constructed  from  statistics  of  the  hair  and  eye 
colours   of   over   ten   million   school  children  in   Germany, 


\  1   22  DEPT8  PLUS  CLAlRS 

K-.WvJ  22  .  INTERMEDIATES  CLAtRS 
22       .,  m  FONCES 

22       •  PLUS   FONCES 


mimmmiim1 


Fig.  5. 
Distribution  of  the  Colour  of  the  Eyes  in  France  ;  from  Topinard.     The 
eighty-eight  Departments  (Alsace-Lorraine  added  and  counted  as  one) 
are  divided  into  four  equal  groups. 

Austria,  Belgium,  and  Switzerland.  The  fairest  children 
occur  in  the  north,  and,  speaking  in  general  terms,  they 
darken  as  one  proceeds  south  and  west ;  thus  the  darkest 
children  are  to  be  found  on  the  confines  of  Italy  and  France. 
There  are,  however,  several  dark  "  islands  "  in  Central  Ger- 


44 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


many,  especially  in  Bohemia,  and  numerous  light  "  islands  " 
in  the  extreme  south  of  this  large  area. 

The  maximum  of  frequency  of  the  darks  is  seen  along  the 
Mediterranean  coast,    in  Corsica,  along  the  Pyrenees,  and 


Fig.  6. 

Distribution  of  the  Colour  of  the  Hair  in  France  ;  from  Topinard. 
eighty-eight  Departments  are  divided  into  four  equal  groups. 


The 


also  in  Auvergne.  This  conforms  perfectly  to  what  is 
known  of  the  primitive  location  of  a  dark  population  in  the 
basin  and  islands  of  the  Mediterranean  before  the  Aryan 
invasion.  From  other  sources  we  know  that  there  was  a 
mixed  dark  population  in  France  before  the  fair  barbarians 


HAIR   AND  EYE    COLOUR 


45 


came  from  the  north-east  to  overlord  the  earlier  inhabitants 
of  France ;  but  colour  maps  alone  do  not  serve  to  distinguish 
between  these  earlier  peoples.  A  further  analysis  will  be 
made  when  dealing  with  head-form. 


Fig.  7. 
Resultant  of  the  Two  Preceding  Maps  ;  from  Topinard. 


The  map  of  combined  hair  and  eye  colours  marks  the 
descent  of  the  fair  invaders  down  the  valley  of  the  Rhone, 
in  the  direction  of  Upper  Italy.  Other  irregularities  of  dis- 
tribution and  the  various  "  islands,"  such  as  the  depart- 
ments of  Vendee  (75)  and  Charente-Inferieure  (36)  in  the 
west,  Tarn  (54)  and  Tarn  et  Garonne  (59)  in  the  south,  and 


46  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Jura  (8)  and  Drdme  (22)  in  the  east,  can  be  explained  by- 
local    historical    events.     Topinard   asks   whether   the    fair 

island  "  of  Charente-Inferieure  is  due  to  the  English,  to 
the  Protestants  around  La  Rochelle  (the  majority  of  whom 
should  be  fair),  or  to  the  immigration  of  the  Alans  ?  The 
Alans,  or  Alani,  were  Scythian  people,  with  red  hair  and 
grey  eyes,  who  joined  themselves  with  the  Vandals.  They 
occupied  the  middle  course  of  the  Loire  in  451  A.D.1  Col- 
lignon,  however,  does  not  find  Charente-Inferieure  particu- 
larly fair,  and  he  cannot  satisfy  himself  that  any  trace 
exists  of  the  Alans,  about  whom  we  know  really  very  little. 

Topinard  fully  recognises  that  the  departments  are  purely 
administrative  divisions  which  have  no  ethnological  signifi- 
cance, but  it  is  very  convenient  to  take  the  departments  as 
statistical  units,  as  they  are  of  a  sufficient  size  to  give  the 
broad  features  of  the  distribution  of  hair  and  eye  colour- 
ation. The  significance  of  the  distribution  has,  of  course, 
no  relation  whatever  to  the  departments  themselves.  Here 
also,  as  in  Britain,  a  more  detailed  survey  in  selected  dis- 
tricts will  give  most  interesting  and  suggestive  results,  the 
interpretation  of  which  can  best  be  worked  out  by  a  careful 
study  of  the  local  history,  both  prehistoric  and  documental. 
For  France  such  detailed  anthropological  investigations  have 
been  carried  out  by  Dr.  R.  Collignon  in  a  very  thorough 
and  suggestive  manner.  His  methods  are  so  valuable  that 
a  chapter  will  be  devoted  to  an  abstract  of  his  studies  in  the 
Dordogne  district. 

1  G.  de  Mortillet,  Formation  de  la  Nation  Francaise,  1897,  p.  122. 


CHAPTER  III 

VALUE   OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY 

SO  much  attention  has  been  paid  by  anthropologists  to  the 
shape  of  the  head,  and  particularly  to  that  of  the  skull, 
that  the  greater  part  of  the  literature  of  physical  anthro- 
pology is  taken  up  with  minutely  descriptive  and  statistical 
accounts  of  the  contours  and  measurements  of  skulls. 

It  is  obvious  enough  why  the  skull  has  been  so  minutely 
studied.  Although  most  parts  of  the  human  skeleton 
exhibit  distinctive  traits  by  which  they  can  be  readily  dis- 
tinguished from  the  bones  of  other  animals,  the  more  char- 
acteristic human  tendencies  are,  however,  so  to  speak, 
focussed  in  the  skull.  For  example,  the  bones  of  the  legs 
and  the  pelvis  have  become  modified  owing  to  the  assump- 
tion of  the  erect  attitude;  but  the  position  of  the  large  hole 
(the  foramen  magnum)  in  the  base  of  the  skull,  through 
which  the  spinal  cord  passes  into  the  brain,  and  the  balancing 
of  the  head  on  the  vertebral  column,  attest  to  the  same  fact. 

The  acquisition  of  the  erect  attitude  liberated  the  hand 
from  progression,  and  this  gave  it  the  chance  to  become  the 
delicate  and  mobile  mechanism  that  we  now  possess,  and 
which  is  especially  marked  in  the  case  of  musicians,  artists, 
and  skilled  workmen.  The  "  handiness  "  of  the  hand  re- 
lieved the  jaws  from  much  of  the  work  that  they  were  wont 
to  do,  and  as  a  consequence  the  human  jaw  has  a  marked 
tendency  to  be  reduced  in  size. 

47 


48  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Thus  two  very  characteristic  human  traits,  the  erect 
posture  and  the  hand,  have  influenced  the  skull. 

The  other  essentially  human  characteristics  are  mainly 
to  be  found  in  the  head  itself;  of  these  the  most  important 
is  the  brain.  The  absolute  and  relative  large  size  of  the 
brain  at  once  separates  the  brain  of  man  from  that  of  the 
higher  apes.  This  character  can  be  determined  from  an 
examination  of  the  skull  without  any  special  anatomical 
knowledge. 

It  is  convenient  in  considering  the  skull  to  distinguish 
between  the  cranium,  or  brain  case,  and  the  face.  The  latter 
is  composed  of  the  organs  of  sight  and  hearing,  with  their 
protective  casings,  and  the  jaws. 

The  cranium  and  the  face  can,  to  a  certain  extent,  be 
studied  independently  of  each  other,  though  there  is  always 
a  distinct  relation  between  them,  and  the  one  acts  upon  the 
other  in  various  ways. 

Among  the  lower  races  of  men  we  find  that  the  jaws  are 
usually  of  large  size,  and  they  often  project  far  beyond  the 
level  of  the  forehead.  A  skull  in  this  condition  is  called 
**  prognathous,"  "  a  term  which  has  been  rendered,"  as 
Huxley  points  out,  "  with  more  force  than  elegance,  by  the 
Saxon  equivalent — '  snouty.'  "  '  An  example  of  this  prog- 
nathism is  seen  in  the  negro's  skull  (Fig.  8,  No.  4). 

These  great  jaws  are  associated  with  large  teeth  and 
powerful  muscles.  The  jaw  or  masseter  muscles  arise  from 
the  side  walls  of  the  skull,  and  are  inserted  in  the  lower  jaw. 
The  more  powerful  the  muscles  the  higher  they  creep  up  the 
sides  of  the  skull,  their  upward  limit  being  marked  by  a 
curved  line  (the  temporal  crest),  and  the  more  they  are  likely 
to  compress  the  skull,  especially  immediately  behind  the 
orbits.     This  lateral  compression  of  the  temporal  region  of 

1  T.  H.  Huxley,  "Man's  Place  in  Nature:  III.  On  Some  Fossil  Remains 
of  Man,"  Collected  Essays,  vol.  vii  ,  p.  191. 


VALUE   OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY  49 

the  skull  would  naturally  be  most  effective  in  quite  young 
persons  when  the  skull  was  still  pliable.  The  feeding  on 
coarse  food  and  the  absence  or  imperfection  of  cooking  the 
food  would  give  more  work  for  the  jaws,  and  consequently 
the  muscles  would  become  more  powerful.  One  effect  of 
civilisation  is  to  improve  the  commissariat  and  cuisine,  and 
as  a  result  the  jaws  become  smaller,  and  project  less  and 
less  beyond  the  level  of  the  forehead,  that  is,  they  become 
"  orthognathous."  The  teeth  are  reduced  in  size  and  num- 
ber, and  the  masseter  muscles  having  less  work  to  do  become 
smaller  and  less  powerful,  and  consequently  they  exert  less 
pressure  on  the  side  walls  of  the  cranium,  and  so  the  skulls 
are  not  so  narrow,  especially  in  front. 

That  the  jaw  muscles  do  affect  the  skull  has  been  shown 
by  Nehring,1  who,  from  his  studies  on  skulls  of  both  sexes 
and  of  various  ages  of  anthropoid  apes  and  of  dogs  of  differ- 
ent breeds,  is  of  the  opinion  that  the  occurrence  of  a  con- 
striction between  the  orbital  and  cerebral  portions  of  the 
skull  has  direct  relation  to  the  strength  of  the  facial  muscu- 
lature, and  more  especially  of  the  jaw  muscles.  If  the  skull 
of  a  muscular  Eskimo  dog  be  compared  with  that  of  a  pug 
or  a  Bolognese  lap-dog,  it  will  be  found  that  this  constriction 
is  very  marked  in  the  Eskimo  dog,  the  zygomatic  arches  of 
which  are  widely  outstanding,  and  all  the  muscular  attach- 
ments strongly  developed ;  but  the  constriction  is  scarcely 
noticeable  in  the  pug,  and  is  entirely  wanting  in  the 
Bolognese  lap-dog;  the  two  latter  exhibit  feminine  rounded 
forms  of  the  corresponding  parts  of  the  skull,  with  a  fully- 
developed  musculature.  In  domesticated  dogs,  as  in  civilised 
man,  the  jaw  is  relatively  fully  developed,  and  there  is  a 
tendency  to  reduction  of  the  last  molar  tooth. 


1  A.  Nehring,  "  Menschenreste  aus  einem  Sambaqui  von  Santos  in  Brasilien 
unter  Vergleichung  der  Fossilreste  des  Pithecanthropus  erectus,  Dubois,"  Ver- 
handl,  Berliner  ant h.  Gesellsch.,  1895-6. 


5<3  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

It  must  not  be  overlooked  that  the  decrease  of  the  action 
of  the  jaw  muscles  is  concomitant  with  rise  in  culture,  that 
is,  to  increased  mental  activity,  which  is  usually  associated 
with  increase  in  the  volume  of  the  brain.  We  have  already 
seen  that  the  statistics  collected  in  the  anthropometric 
laboratory  in  the  University  of  Cambridge,  as  worked  out 
by  Venn  and  by  Galton,  show  that  the  period  of  the  growth 
of  the  brain  is  prolonged  in  students,  as  opposed  to  those 
of  corresponding  ages  who  cease  to  study. 

It  may  be  accepted  as  true  in  the  main  that  the  increase 
in  the  size  of  the  brain,  which  is  due  to  culture,  is  exhibited 
proportionately  more  in  the  breadth  and  height  than  in  the 
length. 

Thus  culture  may  act  in  two  ways  on  the  skull;  directly, 
by  enlarging  the  volume  of  the  brain,  and  therefore  increas- 
ing the  size  of  the  skull;  and  indirectly,  by  causing  a  reduc- 
tion of  the  jaw,  which  reacts  again  upon  the  skull.  One  is 
not  surprised,  then,  to  find  that  the  higher  races  have,  as  a 
rule,  a  greater  breadth  in  the  anterior  temporal  region  of 
the  skull  than  the  lower  races. 

The  decrease  in  the  size  of  the  jaws  and  of  the  strength 
of  their  muscles  induces  a  corresponding  modification  in  the 
rest  of  the  face.  The  action  of  the  lower  jaw  upon  the 
upper  may  be  likened  to  the  beating  of  a  hammer  on  an 
anvil.  When  the  jaw  muscles  are  powerful  the  lower  jaw  is 
brought  with  a  considerable  force  against  the  upper  jaw, 
and  consequently  the  arches  which  connect  the  upper  jaw 
with  the  cranium  must  be  proportionately  well  developed. 
Conversely  the  weakening  of  the  jaw  muscles  permits,  for 
example,  the  outer  rim  of  the  orbit  and  the  zygomatic  arch 
to  be  of  a  more  delicate  construction. 

The  increase  of  the  brain  causes  the  forehead  to  be  at  the 
same  time  broader  and  higher.  This  fact  was  noted  by  the 
sculptors  of  ancient  Greece,  and  they  increased  the  vertical 


VALUE    OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY 


51 


height  of  the  forehead  of  some  of  their  gods,  so  that,  as  in 
the  case  of  Zeus,  this  human  character  was  carried  by  them 
beyond  human  limits,  when  they  wished  to  emphasise  the 
benevolence  and  mental  superiority  of  the  Father  of  gods 
and  men. 

When  at  an  indoor  gathering  we  see  a  number  of  men 
with  their  hats  off  we  notice  that  their  heads  vary  in  form. 
Some  are  small,  others  large ;  some  have  long  heads,  others 
have  short  ones;  the  head  may  be  high  or  low,  and  the  con- 
tours vary  in  diverse  ways.  These  differences  render  the 
study  of  craniology  peculiarly  difficult,  as  it  is  almost  im- 
possible to  describe  most  of  them  at  the  same  time  succinctly 
and  intelligibly,  and  also  because  innumerable  combinations 
of  variable  elements  may  occur  in  a  collection  of  skulls  from 
a  single  district. 

Dr.  D.  G.  Brinton,  the  well-known  American  anthropolo- 
gist, has  been  so  impressed  with  the  latter  fact,  that  he  de- 
spairs of  the  study  of  craniology  throwing  any  certain  light 
on  the  racial  problems  of  anthropology.  Undoubtedly 
an  immense  amount  of  tedious  labour  has  been  expended  by 
enthusiastic  students  on  the  study  and  description  of  skulls, 
but  often,  one  must  confess,  with  very  meagre  results. 
There  certainly  is  a  wonderful  fascination  in  skulls;  and 
craniology,  which  to  the  outside  observer  appears  to  be 
about  as  uninteresting  a  subject  as  could  well  be  conceived, 
has  lured  its  votaries  to  more  and  more  persistent  and  pains- 
taking effort.  The  present  writer,  who  once  sat  in  the 
seat  of  the  scornful,  has  also  yielded  to  the  charming  of 
craniology. 

A  very  strong  argument  in  favour  of  craniology  is  the 
assistance  that  it  should  render  to  prehistoric  archaeology 
and  to  the  history  of  peoples.  We  have  documentary  and 
legendary  records  of  the  shifting  of  populations,  and  our 
archaeological  museums  are  full  of  interesting  records  of  the 


52 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


past.     It  would  be  a  matter  of  great  importance  if  the  skulls 
that  are  exhumed  could  also  be  brought  in  as  evidence. 

We  are  again  face  to  face  with  the  question  that  con- 
fronted us  when  considering  the  colour  of  the  eyes  and  hair. 
1  2 


Upper  and  Side  Views  of  a  Kalmuk's  and  of  a  Negro's  Skull 
after  Ranke. 


Can  one  particular  head-form,  or  a  restricted  number  of 
head-forms,  be  regarded  as  characteristic  of  a  race  or  con- 
sanguineous group  ?  And  are  these  characters  sufficiently 
constant  to  be  of  scientific  value  ? 


VALUE   OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY  53 

Before  we  can  attempt  to  answer  these  two  questions,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  give  a  brief  account  of  the  methods  and 
nomenclature  of  craniometry.  Fortunately,  a  very  short 
description  will  serve  the  present  purpose,  as  we  are  con- 
cerned with  only  one  or  two  aspects  of  the  subject,  and  not 
with  craniology  as  a  whole. 

On  looking  at  a  number  of  skulls  from  above,  it  is  seen 
that  they  are  all  longer  than  broad,  though  some  are  less  so 
than  others,  and  that  the  contour  is  very  varied.  Some 
may  have  somewhat  flat  sides,  others  have  gently  rounded 
sides,  or  the  skull  may  appear  narrow  in  front  and  swollen 
behind ;  indeed,  there  may  be  great  variation  in  this  respect 
even  in  skulls  which  have  the  same  relation  of  breadth  to 
length.,  Skulls  must  also  be  looked  at  from  the  front,  side, 
back,  and  underneath,  and  their  peculiarities  noted. 

The  character  which  is  most  frequently  recorded  is  the 
ratio  of  the  breadth  of  the  skull  to  its  length.  One  speaks 
loosely  of  a  long  or  a  narrow,  or  of  a  short  or  round  skull, 
but  such  vague  descriptions  are  of  no  scientific  value.  An- 
thropologists now  adopt  the  plan  of  calculating  indices 
which  accurately  express  this  numerical  relation.  The  ex- 
treme length  and  breadth  of  a  skull  are  measured,  the 
breadth  is  multiplied  by  one  hundred,  and  the  total  is 
divided  by  the  length ;  the  result  is  the  cranial  index. 

Breadth  X  100        T    , 

■ =  Index. 

Length. 

In  other  words  the  length  is  reduced  to  one  hundred,  and 
the  ratio  of  the  breadth  to  that  is  the  index. 

The  altitudinal  index  is  the  ratio  of  the  height  either  to 
the  length  or  to  the  breadth. 

HeiSht  X  IO°  =  Index.  Height  x  100  =  Index 

Length.  Breadth. 


54  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Directions  for  taking  these  measurements  will  be  found 
in  the  chapter  dealing  with  practical  instructions. 

There  are  numerous  facial  measurements  from  which 
various  indices  are  obtained,  but  these  do  not  concern  us  at 
present. 

The  cranial  index  is  usually  grouped  into  three  series;  a 
skull  is  said  to  be  dolichocephalic  when  its  index  does  not 
exceed  75,  to  be  mesaticephalic  between  75  and  80,  and  to 
be  brachycephalic  when  over  80.  Some  investigators  who 
aim  at  great  exactness  increase  the  range  in  the  following 
manner: 

Ultra-dolichocephalic 60-64.9 

Hyper-dolichocephalic 65-69.9 

Dolichocephalic 70-74.9 

Mesaticephalic 75— 79-9 

Brachycephalic 80-84.9 

Hyper-brachycephalic 85-89.9 

Ultra-brachycephalic 90-94.9 

There  is  a  tendency  in  some  quarters  to  extend  dolicho- 
cephaly  up  to  77.9,  so  as  to  reduce  mesaticephaly  to  the 
narrow  range  of  78  to  80. 

If  we  take  a  general  survey  of  the  races  of  mankind,  we 
find  that  they  can  be  arranged  in  a  manner  by  taking  the 
mean  cranial  index  of  each  of  the  following  groups.  In  all 
cases  the  numbers  vary  about  this  mean  ;  but  where  a  people 
is  known  or  presumed  to  be  fairly  pure  the  range  of  varia- 
tion is  much  less  than  where  mixture  is  known  to  have 
occurred. 

At  the  first  glance  it  appears  as  if  the  cranial  indices  were 
too  generally  distributed  over  the  world  to  prove  of  much 
ethnographical  or  historical  value.  This  is  perfectly  true  if 
these  indices  are  considered  by  themselves.  It  is  only  when 
taken  into  consideration  with  other  physical  characters  that 
the  cranial  index  is  of  any  value  whatever. 


VALUE   OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY 


55 


DOLICHOCEPHALS. 

MESATICEPHALS. 

BRACHYCEPHALS. 

Sardinians  \ 
Sicilians      f  " ' 

Scandinavians 74 

S.  Italians 75 

Scandinavians 76 

British 76-77 

Spanish  Basques.  .  .    7b 

Parisians 79 

Prussians 79 

Finns 80 

M 

E 

o 
K 

D 
M 

French  Basques 80 

S.  Germans 83 

Auvergnats 84 

Lapps 85 

< 
9 

Veddahs 72 

Ainus 72-76 

Dravidians 74 

Chinese     )                      „ 
Japanese  )  '  "  '   ''' 
Parsees 78 

Koreans 81 

Negritoes 80-82 

Mongols  ) 

Kirgis       j. 85-86 

Kalmuks  ) 

Burmese S6 

< 

u 

< 

Soudanese 71 

Negroes ...   73 

KaHrs     ) 

Berbers  f li 

Arabs 74 

Bushmen 75 

Negrilloes 74~77 

Copts 76 

Hausas 77 

*edjaS     I 78 

Boulous  \                      ' 

Adoumas 80 

< 

< 
H 
U 

o 

Fijians,  interior.. . .   66 

Australians 70 

Admiralty  Isl'ds.   70-73 
N.  W.  Papuans 72 

Polynesians  ....   75-80 

Tasmanians 76 

Dyaks 77 

Javanese 80-82 

Polynesians ....  82-87 
Tongans 84 

< 
y 
5 

M 

a 
<: 

Eskimo 70-72 

Fuegans 72-76 

Patagonians 74 

Botocudos 74 

Hurons 75 

Californians 77 

Caribs 75-3o 

^avai°s  1 82-86 

Apaches  ) 

Alaskans 83 

Araucanians.  . .  .  83-85 
Aleouts 86 

The  inhabitants  of  large  areas  of  Asia  are  distinctly  bra- 
chycephalic,  but  among  the  mixed  peoples  of  China  and 
Japan  mesaticephalism  is  prevalent.  In  the  northern  parts 
of  the  latter  country  one  finds  the  remarkable  Ainus  or 
Ainos,  who  differ  in  so  many  respects  from  their  Japanese 
neighbours  and  conquerors.  These  very  interesting  people 
were  formerly  much  more  numerous  than  they  are  at  present ; 


56  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

they  probably  occupied  the  whole  or  the  greater  part  of  the 
Japanese  Archipelago,  and  also  considerable  tracts  of  the 
mainland  opposite.  They  are  short — the  men  range  from 
about  1545  mm.  (5  ft.  j  in.),  to  1600  mm.  (5  ft.  3  in.);  the 
women  are  some  75  mm.  (3  inches)  shorter.  The  colour  of 
their  skin,  though  of  various  shades  of  brown,  has  a  reddish 
tinge,  and  more  resembles  that  of  a  Southern  European 
than  an  Asiatic ;  the  coarse  black  hair  is  long  and  wavy,  and 
is  so  profusely  developed  that  the  Ainus  are  the  hairiest  of 
mankind.  From  a  careful  consideration  of  all  the  facts,  De 
Quatrefages  1  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  "  the  Ainus  are 
fundamentally  a  white  and  dolichocephalic  2  race,  more  or 
,  less  altered  by  other  ethnic  elements,  of  which  one,  at  least, 
is  essentially  Mongolic. " 

In  India  there  are  two  main  groups  of  people — the  tall, 
comparatively  fair,  dolichocephalic  Aryan  invaders,  and  the 
short,  dark,  also  dolichocephalic  aboriginal  population.  The 
latter  are  usually  spoken  of  under  the  general  name  of 
Dravidians  (Plate  2,  Fig.  1).  These  dark-skinned  people, 
with  abundant  black  wavy  hair,  are  probably  distantly  allied 
to  the  Melanochroi  or  dark  group  of  the  Southern  European 
(or  Mediterranean)  stock  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  Aus- 
tralians on  the  other. 

The  cousins  Sarasin  have  brought  forward  evidence  to 
prove  that  the  Veddahs  of  Ceylon  are  the  least  modified 
descendants  of  that  "  Proto-Dravidian  "  race  from  which 
the  diverse  people  just  mentioned  have  diverged. 

The  typical  Asiatic  race,  the  yellow-skinned  brachy- 
cephals,  are  scarcely  represented  in  India,  and  there  only  at 
the  northern  and  eastern  frontiers  of  Bengal.  In  fact,  one 
would  scarcely    be   wrong   in    saying   that,    ethnologically 

1  Histoire  Generate  des  Races  Humaines,  1889,  p.  467. 

2  The  mean  cephalic  index  of  ninety-five  Ainu  men  was  77.3,  and  that  of 
seventy-one  women  was  78.4. 


VALUE    OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY  57 

speaking,  India  is  more  "  European  "  and  less  "  Asiatic  " 
than  Lapland. 

Amongst  the  brachycephalic  Asiatics  are  to  be  found  the 
Negritoes.  So  far  as  their  cranial  index  is  concerned  it  is 
practically  identical  with  that  of  the  average  Japanese,  who 
may  be  regarded  as  very  characteristic  Mongoloids;  but 
when  one  compares  their  other  physical  traits  it  is  at  once 
apparent  that  we  are  dealing  with  two  entirely  different 
races.  The  Negritoes  comprise  the  Mincopies,  or  natives 
of  the  Andaman  Islands,  in  the  Bay  of  Bengal,  certain  hill 
tribes  of  the  Malay  Peninsula,  such  as  the  Semangs,  Sakais,1 
and  Senois,  and  the  Aetas  of  the  Philippines.  We  will  take 
the  Andamanese,  as  they  have  been  most  fully  studied,  and 
compare  them  with  an  average  Japanese  type.2 

ANDAMANESE.  JAPANESE. 

Av.  stature,  males 1431  mm.  (4  ft.  8.3  in.)  1650  mm.  (5  ft.  5  in.) 

Colour  of  skin Sooty  black.  Yellowish. 

Hair Black,  short,  frizzly.  Black,  long,  straight. 

Cranial  capacity 12S1  cc.  (male).  1605. 

Cranial  index 81.1.  80.4. 

The  stature,  colour  of  the  skin,  nature  of  the  hair,  and 
the  cranial  capacity  are  all  anthropological  characters  of  the 
first  rank,  and  therefore  it  is  needless  to  enter  more  fully 
into  the  details  of  the  other  external  or  cranial  characters. 
It  is  sufficient  to  state  that  the  Andamanese  has  an  infantile 
cast  of  countenance,  and  though  he  is  related  to  the  African 
Negro  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  Melanesian  on  the  other, 
yet  the  common  features  of  these  people  are,  as  it  were, 
blurred    and   softened   in   "  our  little  Andamanese  fellow- 

1  The  Sakais  were  probably  of  Negrito  origin,  but  they  have  since  become 
greatly  modified. 

1  A.  de  Quatrefages  et  E.  T.  Hamy,  Crania  Ethnica  :  Les  Crdnes  des  Races 
Humawes,  1882,  p.  430. 


58  THE    STUDY  OF  MAN 

subjects,"  who,  in  the  words  of  Sir  William  Flower,1  are 
"  probably  the  least  modified  descendants  of  the  primitive 
members  of  the  great  branch  of  the  human  species  charac- 
terised by  their  black  skins  and  frizzly  hair."  He,  how- 
ever, is  careful  to  point  out  that  "  some  characters,  as  the 
brachycephaly,  seem  special  to  the  race." 

The  Kalmuk,  with  his  broad  face,  high  cheek  bones, 
prominent  brow  ridges,  narrow  eye  openings,  and  well- 
marked  falciform  fold  in  the  inner  angle  of  the  eye,  flat 
sunken  nose  with  circular  nostrils,  and  somewhat  promi- 
nent jaws,  combines  the  distinctive  characters  of  a  typical 
Mongolian. 

Without  going  into  details  which  would  be  out  of  place 
here,  we  find  that  the  representatives  of  the  three  main 
groups  of  mankind  are  to  be  found  in  Asia.  These  three 
groups,  whose  characters  have  been  so  admirably  defined 
by  Sir  William  Flower  in  his  presidential  address  to  the 
Anthropological  Institute  in  1885,  are2: 

1.  The  Ethiopian,  Negroid,  or  Melanesian,  or  "  black  " 
type. 

2.  The  Mongolian,  or  Xanthous,  or  "  yellow  "  type. 

3.  The  Caucasian,  or  "  white  "  type. 

The  American,  or  "  red,"  type  is  regarded  by  some  as  a 
distinct  group  equivalent  to  the  other  three. 

If  one  classifies  mankind  by  the  character  of  the  hair,  it 
is  found  that  the  Negroid  peoples  all  have  frizzly  hair,  that 
which   is  often   called   "woolly."     The  Caucasians3  have 

1  W.  H.  Flower,  "  The  Pygmy  Races  of  Men,"  Proceedings  Royal  Inst.  Gt. 
Brit.,  1888;  and  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xviii.,  1888,  p.  73.  Cf.  also  W.  H. 
Flower,  "  On  the  Osteology  and  Affinities  of  the  Natives  of  the  Andaman 
Islands,"  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  ix.,  1879,  P-  I0&  !  anc*  xiv.,  1884,  p.  115. 

2  W.  H.  Flower,  "  The  Classification  of  the  Varieties  of  the  Human  Species," 
Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xiv.,  1885,  p.  378. 

3  J.  S.  Stuart-Glennie  proposes  the  name  of  Hypenetian  ("  the  bearded 
men")  for  the  Caucasian:  the  latter  term  is  open  to  several  objections,  while 


VALUE   OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY  59 

curly  or  wavy  hair,  and  the  Mongolians  and  Americans 
have  straight  hair. 

According  to  this  grouping  the  main  races  of  man  would 
be  classified  as  follows: 

ULOTRICHI: — Frizzly    black   hair,    black   skin,    essentially 
dolichocephalic. 

The  Negroes,  Bantus,  Bushmen,  and  Negrilloes  of 
Africa.  The  Negritoes  of  Asia  and  the  Melanesians 
of  the  West  Pacific. 

CYMOTRICHI : — Wavy  hair  of  all  shades,  skin  colour  white 
to  black,  dolicho-,  mesati-,  and  brachycephalic. 

The  Xanthochroi  (or  fair  "  whites")  of  North 
Europe,  and  the  Melanochroi  (or  dark  "whites") 
of  South  Europe,  with  the  Semites,  Hamites,  Dravid- 
ians,  Australians,  Ainus,  and  possibly  the  Polynes- 
ians. 

LEIOTRICHI : — Straight  black  hair,  skin  colour  yellowish  to 
brown,  essentially  brachycephalic. 

Most  of  the  inhabitants  of  Asia  (excluding  India, 
Persia,  etc.)  and  the  American  Indians. 

Asia  thus  possesses  several  very  primitive  stocks.  The 
Andamanese,  stated  by  Flower  to  be  the  scarcely  modified 
descendants  of  an  extremely  ancient  race,  the  ancestors  of  all 
the  Negroid  tribes.  The  Veddahs  are  claimed  by  the  Sara- 
sins  to  be  one  of  the  primitive  types  of  humanity;  during 
its  evolution  thfe  primitive  type  was  transformed  in  one 
direction  in  India  into  the  Dravidian  type  without  the  as- 

the  new  name  gives  expression  to  the  fact  that  these  people  are  characterised 
by  possessing  full  beards,  a  feature  that  is  well  marked  in  the  Ainu,  Australian, 
and  Dravidian.  It  is  certainly  a  misnomer  to  call  the  black  Australians  and 
Dravidians  members  of  the  "white"  race.  Lucy  M.  J.  Garnett  and  J.  S. 
Stuart-Glennie,  Greek  Folk  Poesy,  i.,  1896,  p.  \\a. 


60  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

sistance  of  mixture;  whilst  in  the  other  direction  it  gave 
rise  to  the  Australian  type.  The  Mongolian  type,  which 
arose  and  specialised  in  the  heart  of  the  continent,  is  uni- 
versally regarded  as  the  characteristic  Asiatic  race.  As 
Mongolic  tribes  have,  at  various  periods,  made  inroads  into 
Europe,  so  fair  and  dark  European  peoples  have,  from  time 
to  time,  invaded  and  colonised  Asia. 

A  few  remarks  must  be  made  on  the  important  question 
of  racial  uniformity.  Sir  William  Flower  has  expressed  the 
opinion -that  there  are  few  people  whose  physical  characters 
offer  a  more  interesting  subject  of  investigation  to  the 
anthropologist  than  the  native  inhabitants  of  the  Andaman 
Islands.  Purity  of  type,  due  to  freedom  from  mixture  with 
all  other  races  for  an  extremely  long  period,  owing  to  their 
isolated  position  and  their  inveterate  hostility  to  all  intrud- 
ers on  their  shores,  and  exemplified  in  their  uniformity  of 
physical  characteristics,  is  to  be  found  among  them,  perhaps 
in  a  more  complete  degree  than  in  any  other  group  of  man- 
kind. That  a  certain  admixture  from  other  races,  occa- 
sioned by  intentional  visits,  or  accidental  wrecking  of  vessels 
on  their  coasts,  and  absorption  of  some  portion  of  foreign 
element  thus  derived  into  the  native  population  may  have 
taken  place  from  time  to  time,  cannot  be  denied,  but  it  is 
questionable  whether  this  has  been  sufficient  to  affect 
materially  the  physical  characters  of  the  majority.  The 
most  recent  and  carefully-made  observations,  especially 
when  supported  by  osteological  and  photographic  evidence, 
tend  to  confirm  the  view  that  a  striking  uniformity  of  type 
is  prevalent  among  the  Andamanese.  Some  travellers  and 
even  residents  have,  however,  remarked  on  differences  of 
type.  Flower  speaks  of  the  "  wonderful  similarity  "  of  a 
large  series  of  crania  that  were  before  him;  "  the  skeleton 
of  the  face  of  the  Andamanese  is  even  more  characteristic 
and  uniform  in  appearance  than  that  of  the  cranium." 


VALUE   OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY  6 1 

The  same  fact  has  been  noticed  in  other  places,  and  for 
various  peoples  where  isolation  has  occurred.  We  may 
therefore  take  it  for  granted  that  there  is  a  considerable  per- 
manence of  type  under  certain  conditions.  On  the  other 
hand  all  biologists  admit  that  evolution  has  and  does  occur 
wherever  there  is  life,  but  the  process  is  extremely  variable 
in  its  rate,  nor  can  its  direction  be  predicated.  There  are 
numerous  examples  in  palaeontology  and  zoology  of  a  per- 
sistence of  type  that  is  simply  astounding. 

What  applies  to  lower  forms  of  life  must  hold  good  for 
man,  but  the  problem  is  complicated  by  the  presence  of 
other  factors.  An  isolated  group  of  organisms  in  a  uniform 
environment  is  much  less  liable  to  modification,  that  is,  to 
evolution,  than  one  which  is  subjected  to  varying  conditions 
of  existence. 

The  purer,  that  is,  the  more  uniform,  the  group,  the  less 
will  be  the  tendency  to  vary. 

A  combination  of  a  pure  group,  or  of  a  homogeneous 
mixture,  and  of  an  isolated  area  with  uniform  conditions  is 
certainly  conducive  to  fixity  of  type.  The  converse  is  con- 
ducive to  variability  of  type  and  therefore  to  evolution. 
The  Mincopies  and  the  Andaman  Islands  may  be  taken  as 
a  good  example  of  the  former  condition,  and  the  British  and 
the  British  Isles  of  the  latter. 

The  cranial  indices  of  a  few  European  peoples  have  been 
arranged  in  the  following  table: 

TABLE  OF  AVERAGE  CRANIAL  INDICES  OF  EUROPEANS. 

(compiled  from  several  sources.) 


Neolithic  man  of  S.  France. .  73        ^ 

Sardinians  and  Sicilians. 73~74 

Scandinavians 74—76 

South  Italians 75 


Dolichocephals. 


62 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


Mesaticephals. 


Brachycephals. 


Spanish  Basques 76 

Guanches 75_77 

Slavs  of  the  Danube   76 

English  and  Scots 76-77 

Roumanians    78 

Prussians 79 

Modern  Parisians 79 

French  Basques 80 

Finns 80 

North  Italians 81 

Bretons 81 

Russians 82 

South  Germans 83 

Savoyards  and  Auvergnats. . .  84 

Bavarians 85 

Lapps 85 


Even  a  slight  scrutiny  will  show  that  the  distribution  of 
the  cranial  indices  in  modern  Europe  is  not  so  casual  as  it 
appears  at  first  sight. 

1.  In  the  extreme  north  the  Lapps  and  the  Finns  are 
brachycephalic. 

2.  North  Europe,  including  the  British  Islands,  Holland, 
North  Germany,  and  Scandinavia,  is  mesaticephalic,  but 
inclining  to  dolichocephaly. 

3.  Central  Europe,  stretching  from  Central  France  through 
Switzerland  and  North  Italy,  Southern  Germany,  and  into 
the  Balkan  Peninsula,  is  brachycephalic. 

4.  Southern  Europe,  including  the  Iberian  Peninsula, 
Southern  Italy,  the  Western  Mediterranean  Islands,  and  the 
northern  shores  of  Africa,  is  dolichocephalic,  with  a  tend- 
ency to  mesaticephaly. 

We  can  thus  broadly  distinguish  four  zones  of  cranial  in- 
dices which  may  also  be  correlated  with  other  physical 
characters. 


VALUE   OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY  63 

1.  The  Northern  Brachycephals  are  short  and  dark. 

2.  The  Northern  Dolichocephals  and  Mesaticephals  are 
tall  and  fair. 

3.  The  Central  Brachycephals  are  short  and  dark. 

4.  The  Southern  Dolichocephals  are  short  and  dark. 

We  may  now  take  a  very  brief  survey  of  the  main  con- 
clusions, which  Dr.  Beddoe  has  arrived  at  after  many  years 
of  careful  study  of  European  craniology,  concerning  the 
history  of  the  cranial  index  in  the  British  Islands. 

What  palaeolithic  man  was  like,  who  roamed  in  the  ancient 
river  valleys  along  with  the  mammoth  and  other  extinct 
animals,  we  have  no  positive  information,  but  a  gradually 
increasing  amount  of  evidence  tends  to  the  conclusion  that 
he  belonged  to  the  race  of  which  the  well-known  crania  of 
Neanderthal,  Spy,  Galley  Hill,  etc.,  are  examples.  There 
is  no  reason  to  believe  that  he  became  extinct.  Beddoe  be- 
lieves that  the  posterity  of  these  makers  of  rudely  chipped 
flint  implements  still  survive  in  these  islands.  After  con- 
siderable changes  in  the  physical  geography  of  our  islands, 
and  the  disappearance  of  the  mammoth,  woolly  rhinoceros, 
cave  bear,  and  other  ancient  forms,  a  new  race  of  men  ap- 
peared in  Britain  who  made  finely  chipped  implements, 
many  of  which  were  beautifully  polished;  they,  too,  knew 
how  to  make  pottery  and  had  domestic  animals.  The  men 
of  the  Neolithic  Age  had  long  skulls,  and  they  buried  their 
dead  in  long  barrows.  This  race  resembled  that  which  is 
ribw  known  under  the  name  of  Baumes-Chandes  or  r Homme- 
Mort,  from  the  sepulchral  caverns  in  the  Department  of 
Lozere.  The  average  cranial  index  of  this  race  is  72 ;  the 
average  of  the  Long  Barrow  race  is  also  about  72.  Traces 
of  these  people  have  been  found  from  the  north  of  Scotland 
to  the  south  of  England,  but  we  are  not  authorised  to  state 
that   this  race  was  spread  throughout  the  whole  of  Great 


64  THE    STUDY  OF  MAN 

Britain.  There  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  whole  counties, 
such  as  Northumberland,  where  there  are,  so  far  as  Beddoe  ' 
is  aware,  no  traces  of  this  race. 

The  skulls  from  the  caves  of  Perth-y-chwaren  in  North 
Wales,  which  were  disinterred  by  Boyd-Dawkins  and 
figured  by  him,  differ  considerably  from  the  common  British 
Neolithic  type,  not  merely  in  breadth,  but  in  physiognomy. 
The  cranial  index  of  this  type  is  76.5,  and  it  may  be  related 
to  the  French  Mesaticephalic  race  of  Furfooz. 

Britain  was '  next  invaded  by  a  race  which  introduced 
bronze  implements.  It  was  robust  and  tall,  not  less  than 
five  feet  nine  inches  (1752  mm.)  in  stature,  bony,  large- 
brained,  harsh-featured,  high-nosed,  with  prominent  brows, 
and  a  breadth  index  of  over  80.  The  majority  probably 
had  light  hair.  They  resembled  the  Borreby  race  of  Den- 
mark, and  the  Swiss  or  Helvetian  race  of  ancient  Switzerland, 
though  with  somewhat  larger  breadth.  The  modern  Wal- 
loons of  Southern  Belgium  have  some  affinities  to  this  type. 
Dr.  Beddoe  further  states  that  this  race  may  have  come 
from  Denmark,  or  from  the  north  of  France,  or  from  Bel- 
gium ;  and  it  may  have  brought  with  it  the  Celtic  language. 

The  immigrants  who  introduced  bronze  into  Britain 
usually  buried  their  dead  chieftains  in  round  barrows,  hence 
they  are  often  termed  the  Round  Barrow  race.  In  Plate 
I.,  Figs.  4-6,  we  have  a  good  example  of  a  skull  of  this  race. 
It  is  interesting,  however,  to  note  that  this  specimen  was 
actually  obtained  from  a  long  barrow.  It  did  not  occur,  like 
the  skull  of  the  other  race  (Figs.  1-3),  on  the  ground  in  the 
centre  of  a  barrow,  but  was  excavated  from  a  depth  of  two 
feet  from  the  surface;  that  is,  it  is  what  is  called  a  "  second- 
ary interment, "thus  proving  that  the  newcomers  occasionally 
made  use  of  the  barrows  of  their  predecessors. 

1  J.  Beddoe,  "  Sur  l'Histoire  de  l'lndice  cephalique  dans  les  lies  Britan- 
niques,"  L  Anthropologic,  v.,  1894,  pp.  513,  658. 


Plate  I. 


Fig. 


Fig.  2. 


Upper,  Front,  and  Side  Views  of  Skulls  of  the  Long  and  Round  Barrow  Races  , 

photographed  by  the  Author  from  specimens  in  the  Cambridge  Anatomical 

Museum. 

Fig.  i.— Long  Barrow,  Dinnington,  Rotherham.  Length,  204  ;  breadth,  143  ;  cran.  index,  70.1 ; 
ht.-length  index,  70.1 ;  ht.-br.  index,  100 ;  orb.  index,  87.2  ;  nas.  index,  42  ;  capacity,  1755  ; 
male. 

Fig.  2.— Skull  of  a  man  of  the  Round  Barrow  Race,  from  a  secondary  interment,  two  feet 
below  the  surface,  in  a  long  barrow,  Winterbourne  Stoke.  Length,  177;  breadth,  156; 
cran.  index,  88.1 ;  orb.  index,  87.5 ;  nas.  index,  49.1. 


VAIUE   OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY  65 

Dr.  Beddoe  does  not  appear  to  recognise  the  possibility  of 
the  presence  in  the  British  Islands  of  the  Neolithic  brachy- 
cephals  of  France.  I  have  recently  '  expressed  myself  as 
follows: 


"lam  inclined  to  think  that  the  Neolithic  brachycephals  of 
Central  Europe  did  come  over  to  the  British  Islands,  and  that 
traces  of  them  are  still  to  be  seen,  perhaps  more  frequently  in 
Ireland  than  in  Great  Britain.  If  this  be  so,  it  is  probable  they 
came  as  a  mixed  people,  that  mixture  of  brachycephals  and 
southern  dolichocephals  which  Broca  called  '  Celts,'  for  it  must 
be  remembered  that  he  regarded  theCeltseof  Caesar  as  a  mixed  peo- 
ple, but  mainly  brachycephals.  The  Neolithic  brachycephalic 
immigrants  into  Western  Europe  almost  certainly  came  from 
Eastern  Europe,  and  possibly  originally  from  Asia;  it  is  also 
probable  that  they  were  primitively  of  the  same  stock  as  the 
Lapps  and  Finns,  or  rather  one  constituent  of  the  latter  people. 
It  may  be  that  the  short,  dark,  brachycephalic  element  in  the 
British  Islands  was  largely  due  to  the  northern  brachycephals 
who  came  direct  from  Scandinavia  in  the  Neolithic  period,  or 
both  northern  and  southern  brachycephals  may  have  contributed 
their  respective  shares." 

The  period  of  the  Roman  domination  is  considered  by 
Beddoe  to  have  somewhat  diminished  the  numerical  propor- 
tion of  the  former  dominant  caste,  which  was  brachycephalic, 
or  at  least  mesaticephalic ;  it  introduced  a  certain  amount 
of  foreign  blood  (Italian  and  other),  and  it  favoured  amal- 
gamation among  the  different  elements  of  the  population. 

"  The  racial  elements  imported  must  have  been  extremely 
mixed,  and  probably  left  scarcely  any  permanent  traces,  though 

1  A.  C.  Haddon,  "  Studies  in  Irish  Craniology,  III.  :  A  Neolithic  Cist  Burial 
at  Oldbridge,  County  Meath,"  Proc.  Roy.  Irish  Acad.  (3),  iv.,  1898,  p.  570. 


66  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

there  may  be  some  in  a  few  ancient  towns  such  as  Gloucester  or 
Leicester.  Among  relics  from  the  Romano-British  villages,  our 
knowledge  of  which  has  been  so  much  increased  by  General 
Pitt-Rivers,  there  are  one  or  two  skulls  which,  in  the  opinion  of 
Dr.  Garson  as  well  as  of  myself  [Beddoe],  show  Roman  or  Italian 
characteristics."  ' 

The  Anglo-Saxon  invasions  were  of  different  tribes  which 
were  local  varieties  of  the  Germanic  type  of  the  row  graves 
or  Hohberg  type.  This  type  is  best  represented  on  the  Con- 
tinent by  the  ancient  skulls  of  Bremen  so  well  described  by 
Gildemeister.  In  the  earliest  days  of  that  city  the  Batavian 
or  Frisian  variety  also  occurred ;  this  variety  is  flatter  in  the 
crown  and  somewhat  broader  than  the  more  typical  form, 
and  it  has  been  recognised  in  Saxon  England  by  Beddoe 
and  quite  recently  by  Myers.8 

11  John  Bull,"  says  Beddoe,3  "is  of  the  Batavian  type;  the 
Grave-row,  that  of  the  barbarian  warrior,  is  perhaps  rather  more 
aristocratic;  but  the  outlines  of  the  former  may  be  connected,  as 
Virchow  thinks  possible,  with  the  obstinacy  and  love  of  freedom 
and  individuality  of  both  Frisian  and  Englishman.  '  These 
men,'  said  an  old  chronicler  of  the  Frisians,  '  been  high  of  body, 
stern  of  virtue,  strong  and  fierce  of  heart:  they  be  free,  and  not 
subject  to  lordship  of  any  man;  and  they  put  their  lives  in  peril 
by  cause  of  freedom,  and  would  liever  die  than  embrace  the  yoke 
of  thraldom.'  " 

The  following  table  is  adapted  from  one  in  Dr.  Beddoe's 
Histoire  de  V  Index  Ce'phalique  : 

1  J.  Beddoe,  The  Anthropological  History  of  Europe  :  Being  the  Rhind 
Lectures  for  i8qi  (A.  Gardner,  London,  1893),  p.  91. 

2  Journ.  Anth.  Insl.,  xxvi.,  p.  113. 

3  Loc.  cit.,  p.  91. 


VALUE   OF  HEAD-FORM  IN  ANTHROPOLOGY 


67 


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5-9 

73-74 

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75-76 

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Mean  Index 

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80 

77-5 

.... 

75.4 

74.8 

78.5 

The  most  ancient  race  is  apparently  homogeneous ;  it  is 
extremely  dolichocephalic,  with  a  mean  index  of  70  or  71, 
according  to  the  ordinary  data,  but  Dr.  Beddoe  is  inclined 
to  make  it  72.  He  also  points  out  that  it  is  by  no  means 
certain  that  only  one  race  occupied  Britain  at  this  period. 

The  second  column,  that  of  the  Round  Barrows,  or,  better, 
the  Bronze  Age,  shows  us  a  brachycephalic  population,  far 
from  being  homogeneous,  owing  probably  to  a  greater  or 
less  mixture  with  their  predecessors  in  the  country.  The 
mean  index  of  the  skull  appears  to  be  about  80,  but  we 
must  admit  that  the  cranial  index  of  the  pure  race,  or,  to 
speak  with  more  exactitude,  of  the  people  using  bronze,  on 
its  arrival  in  England  and  before  its  fusion  with  the  in- 
digenous population,  would  be  a  little  over  80  or  81.  There 
are  indications  which  permit  the  conclusion  to  be  drawn 


68  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

that  with  the  progress  of  mixture  and  the  arrival  of  immi- 
grants from  Belgic  Gaul,  the  mean  fell  below  80. 

The  Romano-British  give  a  mean  of  about  75.5.  Later 
came  the  Saxons.  Before  their  mixture  with  the  conquered 
British,  they  possessed  the  type  of  skull  which  is  called 
"  Grave-row,"  from  the  manner  of  sepulture  of  an  important 
ancient  Teutonic  tribe ;  or  occasionally  the  Batavian  type  of 
skull,  and  their  cranial  index  is  about  75. 

Nothing  positive  has  been  determined  concerning  the 
skull  type  of  the  subsequent  Danish  or  Scandinavian  in- 
vaders. 

In  the  Middle  Ages  we  find  mesaticephals  in  predomin- 
ance, and  a  fresh  frequency  of  brachycephaly,  the  mean  of 
the  indices  being  about  78,  according  to  Dr.  Beddoe's  skull 
measurements. 

The  mean  cephalic  index  of  modern  Englishmen  appears 
to  be  about  78.5,  which,  deducting  the  usual  two  units, 
would  give  76.5  for  the  cranial  index. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  NOSE 

AMONG  peoples  in  whom  the  more  prominent  types  of 
nose  are  of  usual  occurrence — as  among  ourselves,  for 
example — the  snub  nose  is  always  regarded  as  an  inferior 
type,  and,  although  it  may  give  a  certain  vivacity  to  a 
woman's  face,  it  is  usually  regarded  by  her  as  a  trial.  Con- 
versely a  long,  high,  narrow,  Roman  nose  is  considered  an 
"  aristocratic  "  nose.  It  is  certain  that  the  shape  of  the 
nose  is  generally  regarded  not  alone  from  an  aesthetic  point 
of  view,  but  that  to  many  minds  it  conveys  an  idea  of 
weakness  or  strength  of  character,  and  also  of  social  status. 
Certain  types  of  nose  are  "  better  bred  "  than  others,  and, 
other  things  being  equal,  a  man  with  a  "  good  nose  "  is 
more   likely   to   gain  immediate  respect  than  one  with  a 

vulgar  nose."  Martial,  in  one  of  those  epigrams  which 
used  to  amuse  and  instruct  the  emperors  of  the  Flavian 
family,  said:  "  It  is  not  every  one  to  whom  it  has  been 
given  to  have  a  nose."  Popular  impressions  may  be  illogi- 
cal, and  the  prejudices  of  the  folk  may  be  unreasoning,  but 
they  are  all  materials  for  anthropological  and  psychological 
study,  and  they  may  open  up  lines  of  thought  that  are  sug- 
gestive and  fruitful. 

A  well-formed  nose  is  a  distinctively  human  feature.  If 
you  look  at  pictures  of  monkeys,  from  the  low  marmosets 
to  the  great  tailless  apes,  you  will  at  once  notice  how  flat 

69 


yo  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

their  nose  is  at  the  bridge.  The  proboscis-monkey  (Nasalis 
larvatus)  is  the  only  member  of  the  group  that  has  a  well- 
projecting  nose. 

The  nose  is  a  very  variable  feature  in  mankind.  We  all 
recognise  how  a  nose  will  make  or  mar  a  face,  how  it  gives 
a  countenance  distinction  or  renders  it  insignificant.  Much 
has  been  written  on  noses  by  physiognomists,  and  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  nose  is  greatly  relied  on  by  those  who  pro- 
fess to  be  able  to  read  a  person's  character  by  a  scrutiny  of 
the  face. 

Not  less  is  a  study  of  the  nose  of  interest  to  the  anthro- 
pologist, and  it  is  this  point  of  view  solely  which  concerns 
us  at  present. 

First  of  all  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish  between  the  ex- 
ternal nose  as  seen  on  the  living  face,  and  the  nasal  skeleton 
as  it  is  found  on  the  skull — and  we  must  also  fix  upon  a 
definite  terminology. 

In  the  living  nose  we  recognise  the  bridge,  the  tip,  the  alee 
nasi,  or  wings  of  the  nose,  which  arise  from  the  cheeks  in  a 
rounded  curve,  and  the  nasal  septum  which  separates  the 
nostrils. 

The  height  of  the  nose  is  the  line  from  the  central  point 
of  the  root  to  the  corresponding  point  at  the  angle  which 
the  septum  makes  with  the  upper  lip ;  this  spot  is  termed 
the  sub-nasal  point. 

The  breadth  of  the  nose  is  the  greatest  breadth  of  the 
wings. 

The  depth  of  the  living  nose  is  the  line  from  the  sub-nasal 
point  to  the  tip;  this  line  is  termed  the  base  of  the  nose. 

The  length  is  the  line  from  the  root  to  the  tip. 

On  examining  the  profile  of  a  nose,  two  factors  must  be 
distinguished:  (i)  the  general  outline  of  the  back  or  ridge 
of  the  nose;  and  (2)  the  inclination  of  the  base  of  the  nose 
with  regard  to  the  upper  lip. 


THE  NOSE  jY 

I.  The  general  contour  of  the  back  of  the  nose  is  expressed 
by  the  following  five  terms:  Concave,  straight,  convex,  high- 
bridged,  and  sinuous.  These  form  five  main  classes  which 
can  be  variously  subdivided. 

1.  The  concave  nose.  The  various  kinds  of  concave  or  de- 
pressed nose  agree  in  having  a  low  bridge ;  this,  as  we  have 
already  seen,  is  a  simian  or  ape-like  character;  it  is  also  an 
embryonic  feature,  and  it  commonly  occurs  among  young 
children.  This  type  of  nose  is  very  frequently  met  with 
among  the  yellow  races,  and  is  not  infrequent  among  women 
of  the  higher  races. 

This  type  may  be  defined  in  general  terms  as  being  short, 
depressed,  broad,  with  a  turned-up  point. 

2.  The  straight  nose.  The  ridge  of  the  nose  is  quite 
straight  in  the  most  characteristic  forms,  but  it  is  often 
slightly  sinuous.  The  nose  may  be  short,  low,  and  broad ; 
but  in  the  most  developed  type  it  is  long,  prominent,  and 
narrow. 

3.  The  convex  nose.  The  ridge  or  back  of  the  nose  de- 
scribes a  nearly  uniform  convex  curve  from  the  root  to  the 
point.  As  in  the  last  instance  this  type  varies  from  short, 
low,  and  broad,  to  long,  prominent,  and  narrow.  The 
Jewish  nose  is  the  best-known  variety,  and  the  Papuan  nose 
belongs  to  the  broad  variety  of  this  group. 

4.  The  high-bridged  nose.  The  upper  portion  of  the  bony 
part  presents  a  strong  and  short  convexity,  below  which  the 
remainder  of  this  bony  part  becomes  nearly  straight,  and  is 
continuous  with  the  ridge  of  the  gristly  portion.  The  typi- 
cal example  of  this  type  is  the  Roman  nose  (Fig.  10).  It 
may  be  considered  as  a  variety  of  the  convex  nose. 

5.  The  sinuous  nose.  The  upper  part  is  convex,  but  the 
profile  of  the  gristly  portion,  instead  of  continuing  this  curve 
as  in  the  convex  nose,  or  of  taking  a  rectilinear  direction  as 
in  the  aquiline  nose,  is  incurved.      It  thus  results  that  the 


72 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


Types  of  Noses  in  Profile  ;  from  Topinard. 

i.  Straight,  with  a  horizontal  base;  2.  convex  or  aquiline,  with  a  depressed  base  ;  3.  concave 
or  retrousse,  with  a  reflected  base ;  4.  high-bridged  or  busque  ;  5.  sinuous  ;  6.  Melanesian 
type,  broad,  with  the  lower  part  forming  a  flattened  and  depressed  hook  ;  7.  short,  broad, 
nearly  straight  type  of  the  African  Negroes ;  8.  straight,  flat  type  of  the  Yellow  Races. 


THE  NOSE 


73 


direction  of  the  line  is  convex  above,  concave  below  the 
bony  portion,  and  again  convex  towards  the  tip.  It  is  thus 
sinuous  or  undulating. 

The  sinuous  nose  may  be  considered  as  a  variety  of  the 
concave,  straight,  or  convex  nose, 
according  as  the  totality  of  the 
line  of  the  ridge  presents  a  hol- 
low, a  general  rectilinear  direc- 
tion, or  a  protruding  curve.  It 
is  advisable  that  the  description 
should  always  be  so  qualified. 

Without  going  into  further  de- 
tail we  may  now  pass  on  to  the 
second  factor: 

II.  The  inclination  of  the  base 
of   the    nose    may    form    a   right 
angle  with  the  line  of  the  upper 
lip   or  a  greater  or  a  less  angle  Head  of  Agrippa,  Museo  di  Na- 
with  it ;  thus  we  have : —  Poli  J  from  Hovorka. 

i.  A  reflected  base.  2.  A  horizontal  base.  3.  A  de- 
pressed base. 

Any  of  these  three  conditions  may  occur  with  any  variety 
of  contour,  but  certain  combinations  are  of  more  frequent 
recurrence  than  others.  For  example,  the  concave  nose  is 
usually  reflected  to  form  the  snub  nose,  and  the  convex  nose 
is  either  horizontal  or  depressed,  the  latter  being  the  more 
typical  of  the  Jewish  nose.  A  concave,  depressed  nose  is 
exceptional.  A  rectilinear  nose  with  a  horizontal  base,  and 
one  in  which  the  root  is  slightly  marked  so  that  the  line  of 
the  forehead  passes  gently  into  that  of  the  nose,  constitutes 
the  classical  nose  of  Greek  statues.  As  a  matter  of  fact  this 
feature  was  seized  upon  and  exaggerated  by  certain  Greek 
sculptors,  the  contours  of  the  nose  and  forehead  being  alike 
falsified  so  as  to  give  increased  nobility  to  the  expression. 


74 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


The  majesty  of  the  brow  of  Zeus,  the  wielder  of  the  des- 
tinies of  men,  was  due  to  an  overstepping  of  human  con- 
tours, as  these  in  their  turn,  in  the  dim  ages  of  the  past, 
had  passed  beyo-nd  the  low  outlines  of  the  brute. 


Fig.  ii. 

A,  Head  of  Zeus  Otricoli ;  B,  the  Same,  with  all  the  Hair  Removed, 

and  with  a  Corrected  Profile  ;  from  Hovorka,  after  Langer. 

A  reflected  base  to  a  straight  nose  gives  it  a  piquancy  that 
was  happily  expressed  by  Tennyson  when  he  wrote  '  : 

14  A  damsel  of  high  lineage,  and  a  brow 

May-blossom,  and  a  cheek  of  apple-blossom, 
Hawk  eyes;  and  lightly  was  her  slender  nose 
Tip-tilted  like  the  petal  of  a  flower." 

Bertillon  2  has  collected  numerous  statistics  on  the  con- 
tours of  noses,  and  he  finds  there  is  a  marked  transformation 

1  Gareth  and  Lynette. 

2  A.  Bertillon,  "  De  la  Morphologie  du  Nez,"  Rev.  d'Anthrop.  (3),  ii.,  1887, 
p.  158. 


THE  NOSE 


7$ 


of  the  nose  due  to  the  influence  of  age  which  results  in  a 
kind  of  effacement  and  depression  of  the  tip,  as  is  seen  in 
the  following  table,  in  which  the  numbers  of  subjects  ex- 
amined are  reduced  to  IOOO: 


AGE. 

BASE   OF  NOSE. 

Reflected. 

Horizontal. 

Depressed. 

19-25 
25-35 

35-45 

418 

254 
146 

538 
667 
713 

44 

79 

141 

It  is  seen  that  the  reflected  noses  sink  from  418  in  young 
people  to  146  in  people  in  middle  life,  while  the  depressed 
noses  correspondingly  rise  from  44  to  141.  In  both  in- 
stances the  proportion  is  about  one  to  three. 

In  order  to  obtain  results  which  can  be  accurately  com- 
pared with  one  another,  measurements  are  made  of  the  nose 
and  an  index  is  selected.  The  nasal  index  of  the  living  is 
obtained  by  multiplying  the  breadth  of  the  nose  by  one 
hundred  and  dividing  the  product  by  the  height  of  the  nose. 
The  index,  as  is  usually  done  in  such  cases,  is  divided  into 
three  classes,  narrow,  medium,  and  broad.  In  scientific 
terminology  these  are  called : 

Leptorhine below  70 

Mesorhine 70  to  85 

Platyrhine above  85 

Speaking  in  general  terms,  there  are,  according  to  Topin- 
ard,1  two  extreme  types  of  human  nose — the  low,  broad, 

1  P.  Topinard,  "Documents  sur  l'indice  nasal  du  vivant,"  U  Anthropologic, 
ii.,  1891,  p.  273. 


76  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

and  flat,  and  the  deep,  narrow,  and  prominent — but  between 
these  every  intermediate  grade  is  found.  As  a  rule,  the 
more  prominent  a  nose  is  the  narrower  it  is ;  the  flatter  it  is 
the  broader  it  becomes.  The  depth  increases  with  the 
prominence  and  narrows  and  diminishes  with  the  flattening 
and  broadening.  The  only  exceptions  occur  among  the 
American  Indians  and  the  Eskimo.  The  nose  among  the 
former  is  deep  and  prominent,  but  broad ;  among  the  latter 
it  is  flat  and  broad,  but  at  the  same  time  deep. 

Collignon !  has  proposed  the  following  quinary  classifica- 
tion of  the  nasal  index  of  the  living : — 

Ultra  leptorhine 40  and  under 

(      40  to     44.9 
Hyper  leptorhine -j      45    "     49.9 

(      5o    '       54.9 

(      55    "      59-9 
Leptorhine <      60    "      64.9 

(      65    "      69.9 

(      7o   "      74-9 
Mesorhine ■]       75    "      79.9 

(      80    "      84.9 

(      85    "      89.9 

Platyrhine 3      90    "      94.9 

(  95    "      99-9 

r  100    "     104.9 

Hyper  platyrhine J  105    "    109.9 

(  no    "    114.9 

Ultra  platyrhine 115  and  over 

The  subdivisions,  ranging  in  fives,  may  serve,  on  account 
of  the  great  extent  of  each  group,  to  express  certain  differ- 
ences.    It  is  important,  for  example,  to  be  able  to  distin- 

1  R.  Collignon,  Rev.  d'Anthrop.  (3),  iii.,  1887,  P-  8. 


THE  NOSE 


77 


guish  narrow,  medium,  or  broad  mesorhines;  thus  we  may 
say  the  Eskimo  are  narrow  or  low '  mesorhines,  and  the 
Annamites  are  medium  mesorhines;  or  to  avoid  mistakes 
one  may  add  the  figure  and  say  the  Eskimo  are  mesorhine 
at  seventy,  and  the  Annamites  are  mesorhine  at  seventy-six. 
We  have  at  present  an  insufficient  number  of  measure- 
ments to  draw  up  a  scheme  for  nasal  indices  which  would 
have  a  decisive  value  in  the  classification  of  races.  Colli- 
gnon  has,  however,  collected  the  following  figures,  which 
must  serve  as  a  basis  for  future  researches 2 : — 

NASAL  INDEX  OF  THE  LIVING. 
(from  collignon3.) 

Leptorhines (-7°) 

ioo  French  (very  pure  blond  dolichocephalic  type) 62.98 

30  French  (pure  Mediterranean  race  Pyrenees Orientales),  65.06 

1 84  Kabyles 66.5 

19  Finns 66.5 

200  French  (Auvergne  and  centre) 66.66 

168  Finns  (Mordwines) 66.9 

1000  French 67.33 

100  French  (Savoy  and  Rhone) 68.05 

Tatars  of  the  Crimea 68.15 

68  Parisians 69.4 

120  Tunisians  (Berber  race  II.) 69.76 

.Mesorhines (70~^4) 

1334  Tunisians 7°-23 

10  Eskimo 7°-3 

5  North  American  Indians 7°-6 

40  Tunisians  (Berber  race  IV.  of  Ellez) 72.04 

50  Tunisians  (brachycephalic  Berber  race  I.) 72.5 

1  The  term  "  low  "  refers  to  the  index,  and  not  to  the  height-measurement  of 
the  nose. 

2  See  also  the  table  on  p.  86. 

s  Rev.  d'Anth.  (3),  iii.,  1887,  p.  16. 


78  THE   STUD  Y  OF  MAN 

8  Fuegians 74-8 

26  Kalmuks 74.82 

40  Kara-Kirghis  of  Semiret-chensk 74.9 

6  Tziganes  ("  Gypsies  ") 75.4 

9  Red-skins 75-6 

7  Sinhalese 75-7 

1 13  Tunisians  (Berber  race  III.  of  Djerid) 76.62 

52  Annamites 76.8 

5  Chinese 77 

4  Araucans 80.6 

3  Northern  Mongols 81. 1 

5  South  Americans 81.4 

Platyrhines (85+) 

7  Senegal  Negroes 87.9 

4  Solomon  Islanders 89. 1 

13  Polynesians 89.8 

24  African  Negroes  (casts) 92.2 

11  New  Caledonians  and  New  Hebrideans   93.8 

44  Tunisian  Negroes 96.28 

5  Hottentots  and  Bushmen 97.2 

4  Fijians 97.7 

4  Bushmen 101.7 

52  Zambesi  Negroes 101.5 

4  Australians 101.7 

1 1   Australians 107.6 

7  Tasmanians 108.9 

A  consideration  of  this  table  shows  that  as  a  whole  the 
means  of  the  white  races  range  from  62  to  76,  the  yellow 
races  (including  the  American  races)  from  69  to  81,  the  Afri- 
can Negroes  from  87  to  101,  and  the  Melanesians  (or  Oceanic 
Negroes)  from  93  to  109.  In  other  words  the  white  races 
are  mainly  leptorhine,  the  yellow  races  mainly  and  Ameri- 
can races  entirely  mesorhine,  and  the  black  races  of  Africa, 
the  Western  Pacific,  and  of  Australasia  solely  platyrhine. 

In  a  previous  chapter  I  have  already  drawn  attention  to 


THE  NOSE 


79 


the  fact  that  among  certain  peoples  one  can  distinguish  what 
may  be  termed  a  coarse  type  and  a  fine  type. 

Maspero,  in  his  interesting  Dawn  of  Civilisation?  thus 
graphically  describes  these  two  types  among  the  ancient 
Egyptians : 

"  The  highest  type  of  Egyptian  was  tall  and  slender,  with 
something  that  was  proud  and  imperious  in  the  carriage  of  his 
head  and  in  his  whole  bearing.  He  had  wide  and  full  shoulders, 
muscular  arms,  a  long,  fine  hand,  slightly  developed  hips,  and 
sinewy  legs.  The  head  is  rather  short,  the  face  oval,  the  fore- 
head somewhat  retreating.  The  eyes  are  wide  and  fully  opened, 
the  cheek-bones  not  too  marked,  the  nose  fairly  prominent,  and 
either  straight  or  aquiline.  The  mouth  is  long  and  the  lips  full. 
The  hair  was  inclined  to  be  wavy. 

"The  common  type  was  squat,  dumpy,  and  heavy.  The  chest 
and  shoulders  seem  to  be  enlarged  at  the  expense  of  the  pelvis  and 
hips,  to  such  an  extent  as  to  make  the  want  of  proportion  between 
the  upper  and  lower  parts  of  the  body  startling  and  ungraceful. 
The  skull  is  long,  somewhat  retreating,  and  slightly  flattened  on 
the  top  ;  the  features  are  coarse,  and  as  though  carved  in  flesh  by 
great  strokes  of  the  roughing-out  chisel.  Small  fraenated  eyes,  a 
short  nose,  flanked  by  widely  distended  nostrils,  round  cheeks,  a 
square  chin,  thick,  but  not  curling  lips — this  unattractive  and 
ludicrous  physiognomy,  sometimes  animated  by  an  expression  of 
cunning  which  recalls  the  shrewd  face  of  an  old  French  peasant, 
is  often  lighted  up  by  gleams  of  gentleness  and  of  melancholy 
good  nature. 

"The  external  characteristics  of  these  two  principal  types, 
whose  endless  modifications  are  to  be  found  on  the  ancient  monu- 
ments, may  still  be  seen  among  the  living." 

An  analogous  difference  may  be  noticed  among  the  Jap- 
anese.     Not  only  has  this  appealed  to  the  scientific  mind  of 

1  G.  Maspero,  The  Dawn  of  Civilisation  :  Egypt  and  ChaUata,  Eng.  trans., 
1894,  p.  47. 


80  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Dr.  Balz,  but  it  has  attracted  the  attention  of  native  artists; 
and  one  may  see,  as  in  a  picture  by  Torii  Kiyonaga,  a 
mother  of  the  fine  type,  watching  a  coarse-featured  servant 


Fig.  12. 

Heads  of  Japanese  Men  of  the  Fine  and  Coarse  Type  ;  from 

Hovorka,  after  Balz. 

feeding  the  baby,  who  is  also  depicted  with  a  nose  of  the 
type  of  its  mother's.  The  celebrated  school  of  the  Torii, 
who  flourished  in  the  eighteenth  century,  invented  colour- 
printing.  In  a  picture  by  Outmaro,  a  Japanese  nobleman  is 
paying  a  ceremonial  visit,  and  on  the  verandah  is  seen  his 
low-visaged  bearer,  whose  degraded  countenance  and  squat 
nose  with  its  broad  nostril  offer  a  marked  contrast  to  the 
oval  face  and  delicate  nose  of  his  master.  Peeping  from 
behind  a  screen  are  the  faces  of  three  girls ;  two  of  the  fine 
type  belong  to  daughters  of  the  house,  and  between  them  is 
their  rounder-faced  maid. 

Nowhere  has  the  distinction  between  the  fine  and  coarse 
type  of  nose  been  more  fully  studied  than  in  India,  and  the 
results  of  these  investigations  are  so  interesting  and  import- 
ant that  I  shall  deal  with  them  in  considerable  detail. 

In  1891  and  1892,  Mr.  H.  H.  Risley  published  four 
volumes  on  The  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal,  which  embodied 
an  immense  mass  of  anthropometric  data  and  ethnographic 


Plate  II. 


3H        *    :  'l~±: : *»' 


Fig.  i.     Photograph  of  a  Tamil  Pariah  ;  after  Thurston. 


Fig.  2.     Japanese  Women  of  the  Fine  and  Coarse  Type 
after  a  picture  by  Torii  Kiyonaga. 


THE  NOSE  8 1 

researches.  Mr.  Risley  finds  that  in  India  the  nasal  index 
"  ranks  higher  as  a  distinctive  character  than  the  stature  or 
even  than  the  cephalic  index  itself." 

"  If  we  take  a  series  of  castes,"  writes  Mr.  Risley,  "  in  Bengal, 
Behar,  or  the  North-Western  Provinces,  and  arrange  them  in  the 
order  of  the  average  nasal  index,  so  that  the  caste  with  the  finest 
nose  shall  be  at  the  top,  and  that  with  the  coarsest  at  the  bottom 
of  the  list,  it  will  be  found  that  this  order  substantially  corre- 
sponds with  the  accepted  order  of  social  precedence.  The  caste- 
less  tribes — Kols,  Korwas,  Mundas,  and  the  like — who  have  not 
yet  entered  the  Brahmanical  system,  occupy  the  lowest  place. 
Then  come  the  vermin-eating  Musahars  and  the  leather-dressing 
Chamars.  The  fisher  castes  of  Bauri,  Bind,  and  Kewat  are  a  trifle 
higher  in  the  scale ;  the  pastoral  Goala,  the  cultivating  Kurmi, 
and  a  group  of  cognate  castes  from  whose  hands  a  Brahman  may 
take  water,  follow  in  due  order,  and  from  them  we  pass  to  the 
trading  Khatris,  the  land-holding  Babhans,  and  the  upper  crust  of 
Hindu  society.  Thus,  it  is  scarcely  a  paradox  to  lay  down  as  a 
law  for  the  caste  organisation  in  Eastern  India,  that  a  man's  social 
status  varies  in  inverse  ratio  to  the  width  of  his  nose. 

"  Nor  is  this  the  only  point  in  which  the  two  sets  of  observa- 
tions— the  social  and  the  physical — bear  out  and  illustrate  each 
other.  The  character  of  the  curious  matrimonial  groupings  for 
which  the  late  Mr.  J.  F.  McLennan  devised  the  happy  term  ex- 
ogenous, also  varies  in  a  definite  relation  to  the  gradations  of 
physical  type.  Within  a  certain  range  of  nasal  proportions,  these 
subdivisions*  are  based  almost  exclusively  on  the  totem.  Along 
with  a  somewhat  finer  form  of  nose,  groups  called  after  villages 
and  larger  territorial  areas,  or  bearing  the  name  of  certain  tribal 
or  communal  officials,  begin  to  appear,  and  above  these  again  we 
reach  the  eponymous  saints  and  heroes,  who  in  India,  as  in  Greece 
and  Rome,  are  associated  with  a  certain  stage  of  Aryan  progress."  ' 

1  H.  H.  Risley,  The  Tribes  and  Castes  of  Bengal:  Ethnographic  Glossary, 

i.,  1892,  p.  xxxiii. 
6 


82  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

It  is  now  generally  admitted  that  some  four  thousand 
years  ago  the  valley  of  the  Indus  was  invaded  via  Kabul 
and  Kashmir  by  a  fair  Aryan  race  that  had  already  wandered 
afar,  and  which  now  came  in  contact  with  an  aboriginal 
black  race. 

"  The  sense  of  differences  of  colour,  which,  for  all  our  talk  of 
common  humanity,  still  plays  a  great,  and,  politically,  often  an 
inconvenient  part  in  the  history  of  the  world,  finds  forcible  ex- 
pression in  the  Vedic  descriptions  of  the  people  whom  the  Aryans 
found  in  possession  of  the  plains  of  India.  In  a  well-known  pas- 
sage the  god  Indra  is  praised  for  having  protected  the  Aryan 
colour,  and  the  word  meaning  colour  (varna)  is  used  down  to  the 
present  day  as  the  equivalent  of  caste,  more  especially  with  refer- 
ence to  the  castes  believed  to  be  of  Aryan  descent."  ' 

The  word  caste  is  of  Portuguese  origin.  In  the  179th 
hymn  of  the  first  Mandala  of  the  Rig- Veda,  as  Dr.  Gerson 
da  Cunha  points  out,2  the  word  varna  is  used  in  the  dual 
number,  ubhauvamau,  "  two  colours,"  white  of  the  Aryans, 
and  black  of  the  Dasyus,  that  is,  of  the  Dravidian  aborigines, 
who  are  elsewhere  called  "  black-skinned,"  "  unholy," 
1 '  excommunicated  ' ' ;  other  texts  dwell  on  their  low  stature, 
coarse  features,  and  their  voracious  appetite;  but  what  is  of 
more  immediate  interest,  the  Rig- Veda  applies  the  word 
andsa,  "  noseless,"  to  the  Dasyus  and  Daityas,  which  de- 
signations mean  "  thieves  "  or  "  demons."  It  is  hardly  an 
exaggeration  to  say  that  from  these  sources  there  might  be 
compiled  a  fairly  accurate  anthropological  definition  of  the 
Dravidian  tribes  of  to-day. 

The  Aryan  type,  as  we  find  it  in  India  at  the  present  day, 
is   marked   by   a   relatively   long  (dolichocephalic)  head;  a 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  xxxviii. 

2  "  Presidential  Address:  The  Nasal  Index  in  Biological  Anthropology," 
Journ.  Anth.  Soc.  Bombay,  1892,  p.  542. 


THE  NOSE 


83 


straight,  finely-cut  (leptorhine)  nose ;  a  long,  symmetrically 
narrow  face;  a  well-developed  forehead,  regular  features, 
and  a  high  facial  angle.  The  stature  is  fairly  high,  ranging 
from  1 716  mm.  (5  ft.  J\  in.)  in  the  Sikhs  of  the  Panjab,  to 
1656  mm.  (5  ft.  5 \  in.)  in  the  Brahmans  of  Bengal;  and  the 
general  build  of  the  figure  is  well  proportioned  and  slender 
rather  than  massive.  In  the  castes  which  exhibit  these 
characteristics  the  complexion  is  a  very  light  transparent 
brown — "  wheat-coloured  "  is  the  common  vernacular  de- 
scription— noticeably  fairer  than  that  of  the  mass  of  the 
population.  Colour,  however,  is  a  character  which  eludes 
all  attempts  to  record  or  define  its  gradations,  and  even  the 
extreme  varieties  can  only  be  described  in  very  general 
terms. 

Their  exogamous  groups  are  eponymous,  bearing  the 
names  of  their  Vedic  rishis,  saints  or  heroes. 

In  the  Dravidian  type  the  form  of  the  head  usually  in- 
clines to  be  dolichocephalic,  but  all  other  characters  present 
a  marked  contrast  to  the  Aryan.  The  nose  is  thick  and 
broad,  and  the  formula  expressing  its  proportionate  dimen- 
sions is  higher  than  in  any  known  race,  except  the  Negro. 
The  facial  angle  is  comparatively  low ;  the  lips  are  thick ; 
the  face  wide  and  fleshy ;  the  features  coarse  and  irregular. 
The  average  stature  ranges  in  a  long  series  of  tribes  from 
1562  mm.  (5  ft.  ij  in.)  to  162 1  (5  ft.  3f  in.);  the  figure  is 
squat  and  the  limbs  sturdy.  The  colour  of  the  skin  varies 
from  very  dark  brown  to  a  shade  closely  approaching  black. 

Their  totemistic  groups  bear  the  names  of  animals,  plants, 
and  artificial  objects,  to  all  of  which  diverse  forms  of  taboo 
are  applied. 

Notwithstanding  the  repugnance  of  the  noble  Aryan  to 
mix  with  the  savage  Dasyu,  as  is  evidenced  by  the  poetical 
legends  of  the  contests  between  the  gods  of  the  Hindu 
mythology  with  the  demons,  or  spirits  of  mountain   and 


84  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

forest,  the  indigenous  elements  by  their  numerical  superior- 
ity preponderated  over  the  foreign  ones. 

To  avert  this  menaced  absorption,  and  to  sustain  the 
ethnic  necessity  of  the  caste  system,  a  religious  communion 
was  introduced,  to  which  there  was  less  antipathy.  Sir  A. 
Lyall  has  proved  that  the  primitive  jungle  tribe  moved  im- 
perceptibly into  the  Hindu  system  by  the  gradual  blending 
of  the  old  with  the  new  faith,  which  preceded  their  admis- 
sion into  the  castal  hierarchy  and  the  breaking  up  of  their 
tribal  organisation.  "  They  pass,"  he  says,  "  into  Brah- 
manists  by  a  natural  upward  transition,  which  leads  them  to 
adopt  the  religion  of  the  castes  immediately  above  them  in 
the  social  scale  of  the  composite  population  among  which 
they  settle  down ;  and  we  may  reasonably  guess  that  this 
process  has  been  working  for  centuries."  This  religious 
sanction  is  expounded  in  Manu's  code,  which,  although 
said  to  have  been  written  as  late  as  500  A.D.,  relates  to 
changes  effected  as  early  as  1200  B.C. 

Although  absolutely  hostile  to  the  strain  of  aboriginal 
blood,  the  code  divided  and  subdivided  the  people,  leaving 
out  of  the  system  the  pariah,  which  originally  simply  meant 
a  "  mountaineer."  These  pariahs  are,  probably,  the  de- 
scendants of  the  "  monkey  "  tribes  of  Ravana,  who  crossed 
from  India  into  Ceylon  across  Adam's  Bridge,  as  narrated 
in  the  great  Indian  epic,  the  Rdmdyana,  in  which  the  events 
of  invasion,  war,  and  migration  can  be  dimly  discerned 
through  the  mass  of  tradition  and  legendary  lore  with  which 
they  are  overlaid. 

In  the  Madras  Census  Report  of  1891,  the  Census  Com- 
missioner, Mr.  H.  A.  Stuart,  states  that 

"  it  has  often  been  asserted,  and  is  now  the  general  belief,  that 
the  Brahmans  of  the  south  are  not  pure  Aryans,  but  are  a  mixed 
Aryan  and  Dravidian  race.     In  the  earliest  times  the  caste  divi- 


THE  NOSE 


85 


sion  was  much  less  rigid  than  now,  and  a  person  of  another  caste 
could  become  a  Brahman  by  attaining  the  Brahmanical  standard 
of  knowledge,  and  assuming  the  Brahmanical  functions.  And 
when  we  see  the  Nambudiri  Brahmans,  even  at  the  present  day, 
contracting  alliances,  informal  though  they  be,  with  the  women 
of  the  country,  it  is  not  difficult  to  believe  that,  on  their  first 
arrival,  such  unions  were  even  more  common,  and  that  the 
children  born  of  them  would  be  recognised  as  Brahmans,  though, 
perhaps,  regarded  as  an  inferior  caste.  However,  these  Brah- 
mans, in  whose  veins  mixed  blood  is  supposed  to  run,  are  even 
to  this  day  regarded  as  lower  in  the  social  scale,  and  are  not  al- 
lowed to  mix  freely  with  the  pure  Brahman  community." 

According  to  Mr.  Risley  l : — 

"  The  remarkable  correspondence  between  the  gradations  of 
type  as  brought  out  by  certain  indices,  and  the  gradations  of 
social  precedence,  enables  us  to  conclude  that  community  of  racei 
and  not,  as  has  frequently  been  argued,  community  of  function,  is 
the  real  determining  principle  of  the  caste  system.  Everywhere 
we  find  high  social  position  associated  with  a  certain  physical 
type,  and  conversely  low  social  position  with  a  markedly  different 
type." 

The  latest  investigations  in  Indian  anthropology  are  those 
of  Mr.  Edgar  Thurston,  the  energetic  Superintendent  of 
the  Madras  Government  Museum.2  Mr.  Thurston  has 
studied  the  natives  of  Southern  India,  more  especially  the 
tribes  of  the  Nilgiri  Hills.  The  accompanying  table  is  an 
abridgment  of  his  Table  xi.,  vol.  ii.,  p.  63. 

xJourn.  Anih.  Inst.,  xx.,  1891,  p.  259. 

2  "  Anthropology  of  the  Todas  and  Kotahs  of  the  Nilgiri  Hills  ;  and  of  the 
Brahmans,  Pallis,  Kammalans,  and  Pariahs  of  Madras  City,"  Madras  Govern- 
ment Museum  Bulletin,  vol.  i.,  No.  4,  1S96  ;  "  Anthropology  of  the  Badagas 
and  Irulas  of  the  Nilgiris  ;  Paniyans  of  Malabar  ;  Chinese-Tamil  Cross  ;  a 
Cheruman  Skull  ;  Kuruba  or  Kurumba  ;  Summary  of  Results"  (/.  c.,  vol.  ii., 
No.  1,  1897). 


86 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


TABLE  OF  NASAL  INDICES  OF  CASTES  AND  TRIBES  OF 
SOUTHERN  INDIA 

(AFTER   THURSTON.) 

Average.  Minimum.  Maximum.  Range. 

Leptorhine  =  70. 

Lambadis 69.1  59.2  83.7  24.5 

Sheik  Muhammadans 70  60  85. 1  25.1 

Mesorhine  70  =  85. 

Kurubas 73-2  62.3  85.9  23.6 

Todas 74-9  61.2  89.1  17.9 

Kotas 75-5  64  92.9  18.9 

Badagas 75-6  62.7  88.4  15.7 

Kanarese  Pariahs 75.9  61.5  88.1  26.6 

Pattar  Brahmans 76.5  64.7  95.3  30.1 

Brahmans  (Madras  City)  ...  .  76.7  60  95.1  35.1 

Cherumans 78.1  69.6  88.9  29.3 

Tamil  Pariahs 80  66  105  39 

Muppas 81.5  70.5  92.3  21.8 

Irulas 84.9  72.3  100  27.7 

Platyrhine  85  -|- 

Pal  Kurumbas 87  

Urali  Kurumbas 93.4  ....  .... 

Sholigas 94.4  ....  ....  .... 

Paniyans 95.1  83.7  108. 6  24.9 

Of  the  twenty-four  cases  in  the  original  table  only  two  are 
leptorhine  and  four  are  platyrhine,  the  great  majority  being 
mesorhine. 

In  the  next  table  we  have  a  comparison  of  nasal  indices 
of  20-25  members  of  various  classes,  arranged  in  groups  of 
ten  units.  This  very  clearly  brings  out  the  value  of  the 
nasal  index  in  the  discrimination  of  races. 


50-60  60-70 

Lambadis 2  13 

Sheik  Muhammadans 13 

Kurubas 8 

Kanarese  Pariahs 6 

Todas 4 


70-80 

80-90  90-1 

6 

4 

11 

1 

14 

3 

10 

9 

13 

8 

OO     IOO-IIO 


THE  NOSE  2>7 

50-60  60-70   70-80   80-90  90-100  IOO-IIO 

Kotas 4  11  8  1 

Brahmans  (Madras  City) 4  12  8  1 

Pattar  Brahmans 4  15  4  2 

Badagas 3  14  8 

Tamil  Pariahs I  g  14  j 

Cherumans I  16  8 

Muppas ..  11  n  2 

Irulas 7  11  6           1 

Paniyans 5  9         j0 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  average  nasal  index  of  the  people 
investigated  ranges  from  69. 1  in  the  tall,  light-skinned,  and 
long,  narrow-nosed  Lambadis,  who  speak  an  Aryan  lan- 
guage, to  95.1  in  the  short,  dark-skinned,  and  short,  broad- 
nosed  Paniyans ;  and  that  the  indices  recorded  range  between 
a  minimum  of  59.2  in  a  Lambadi  and  a  maximum  of  108.6 
in  a  Paniyan.  Mr  Thurston  has,  however,  measured  a 
Paniyan  woman  who  possessed  a  nose  31  mm.  in  height  and 
37  mm.  in  breadth,  the  nasal  index  being  1 19.4.  The  Sheik 
Muhammadans  of  Madras  claim  to  be  descendants  of  emi- 
grants from  the  north,  and  to  be  distinct  from  the  converted 
Dravidians.  Their  claim  is  no  doubt  justified;  but  well- 
marked  signs  of  admixture  of  Dravidian  blood  are  conspicu- 
ous in  some  members  of  their  communities,  whose  dark  skin 
and  high  nasal  index  betray  their  non-Aryan  descent.  This 
miscegenation  is  clearly  brought  out  by  Thurston  in  the 
figure  given  on  page  89,  in  which  we  have  a  series  of  triangles 
representing  in  two-thirds  natural  size  the  minima,  average, 
and  maxima  nasal  indices  of  individuals  belonging  to  the 
poorer  classes  of  Brahmans  of  Madras  City,  of  Tamil  Pariahs, 
and  of  Paniyans.  There  is  obviously  far  less  connection  be- 
tween the  Brahman  minimum  and  the  Paniyan  maximum 
than  between  the  Brahman  and  Pariah  maxima  and  the 
Paniyan  average.  The  frequent  occurrence  of  high  nasal 
indices,  resulting  from  short,  broad  noses,  in  Brahmans  has 


88  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

already  been  accounted  for  in  the  quotations  I  have  made 
from  Sir  A.  Lyall  and  Mr.  H.  A.  Stuart. 

One  is  accustomed  to  regard  the  problem  of  Indian  eth- 
nography as  of  only  moderate  complexity,  as  is  seen  in  the 
following  abstract  of  a  paper  by  Mr.  Risley.1 

There  are  three  main  types  in  the  population  of  India  at 
the  present  day  : — 

i.  A  leptorhine,  pro-opic,2  dolichocephalic  type,  of  tall 
stature,  light  build,  long  and  narrow  face,  comparatively  fair 
complexion,  and  high  facial  angle. 

This  type  is  most  marked  in  the  Panjab. 

Their  exogamous  groups  are  eponymous,  names  of  Vedic 
saints  or  heroes. 

2.  A  platyrhine,  mesopic,2  or  nearly  platyopic,  dolichoce- 
phalic type,  of  low  stature,  thickset,  very  dark  complexion, 
relatively  broad  face,  usually  low  facial  angle.  This  type  is 
most  distinct  in  Chota  Nagpore  and  the  Central  Provinces. 

Its  sections  are  totemistic,  like  those  of  North  American 
Indians ;  that  is,  they  are  names  of  animals,  plants,  or  artifi- 
cial objects,  to  all  of  which  some  form  of  taboo  applies. 

3.  A  mesorhine,  platyopic,2  brachycephalic  type  of  a  low 
or  medium  stature,  sturdy  build,  yellowish  complexion, 
broad  face,  and  low  facial  angle. 

This  type  is  found  along  the  northern  and  eastern  frontiers 
of  Bengal. 

Their  exogamous  groups  are  very  curious,  being  mostly 
nicknames  of  the  supposed   founder  of  the  sept,   such  as 

the  fat  man  who  broke  the  stool,"  and  others  less  fit  for 
publication. 

1  H.  H.  Risley,  "The  Study  of  Ethnology  in  India,"  Journ.  Anth.  Inst., 
xx.,  1891,  p.  235. 

2  The  terms  pro-opic,  mesopic,  and  platyopic  have  reference  to  the  height  or 
prominence  of  the  bridge  of  the  nose  ;  for  further  details  see  the  chapter  on 
measurements. 


THE  NOSE 


89 


Brahman 


Pariah 


Mini 


Paniyan 
Average 


Maximum 


Fig.  13. 
Diagrams  of  the  Variations  in  the  Height  and  Breadth  of  the  Noses  of 
the  Poorer  Classes  of  Brahmans  of  Madras  City,  of  Tamil  Pariahs, 
and  of  Paniyans,  two-thirds  Natural  Size  ;  after  Thurston. 


90  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

1.  Leptorhine,  Pro-opic  Dolichoceplials. 

If  it  be  accepted  that  Karl  Penka  has  proved  the  typical 
Aryan  to  be  dolichocephalic,  there  would  seem  to  be  some 
grounds  for  believing  that  in  the  dolichocephalic  leptorhine 
type  of  the  Panjab  and  north-western  frontier  at  the  present 
day,  we  may  recognise  the  descendants  of  the  invading 
Aryans  of  three  thousand  years  ago,  changed,  no  doubt,  in 
hair,  eyes,  and  complexion,  but  retaining  the  more  enduring 
characteristics  of  their  race  in  the  shape  of  their  head,  their 
stature,  and  the  finely-cut  proportions  of  their  nose.  Sur- 
vivals of  fair,  or  rather  reddish  hair,  grey  eyes,  and  reddish- 
blond  complexion  are,  moreover,  still  to  be  found,  as  Penka 
has  pointed  out,  and  as  Risley  himself  has  seen,  among  the 
Kaffirs  from  beyond  the  Panjab  frontier. 

Anyway,  the  striking  preponderance  of  dolichocephaly  in 
the  Panjab  and  the  North-Western  Provinces,  and  its 
gradual  increase  as  we  travel  up  the  Ganges  Valley  towards 
the  traditional  Aryan  tract,  tend  both  to  strengthen  Penka's 
hypothesis  and  to  enhance  the  credibility  of  early  Indian 
legends.  These  facts  go  also  to  show  that  Penka  is  mis- 
taken in  supposing  that  the  Indian  branch  of  the  Aryans 
became  brachycephalic  on  their  way  to  India.  Had  this 
been  so,  the  dolichocephaly  which  now  distinguishes  them 
could  only  have  been  derived  from  crosses  with  the  black 
race,  and  the  Aryans  could  hardly  have  become  dolichoce- 
phalic in  this  way  without  also  becoming  platyrhine. 

2.  Platyrhine,  Mesopic  DolicJiocephals. 

The  measurements  show  the  current  distinction  between 
the  Dravidians  and  Kolarians,  on  which  stress  has  been  laid 
by  Dalton  and  others,  to  be  a  purely  linguistic  character, 
not  corresponding  to  any  appreciable  difference  of  physical 
type. 


THE  NOSE 


91 


The  hypothesis  of  the  north-eastern  origin  of  the  so-called 
Kolarians  urged  by  Colonel  Dalton,  and  recently  advanced 
by  Mr.  J.  F.  Hewitt,  must  also  be  abandoned  as  inconsistent 
with  the  dolichocephalic  skull  of  the  typical  representatives 
of  the  group. 

Whatever  the  Kolhs  may  be,  they  certainly  are  not  a 
Mongoloid  race. 

3.  Mesorhine,  Platyopic  Brachycephals. 

All  of  the  groups  which  come  within  this  category  are 
demonstrably  of  more  or  less  pronounced  Mongolian  de- 
scent ;  and  we  may  conveniently  call  them  Mongoloid. 

The  type  is  essentially  a  frontier  type,  and  its  influence 
can  in  no  case  be  traced  far  into  the  interior  of  India. 

The  Kochh  or  Rajbansi,  a  large  tribe  of  Bengal,  who  now 
pose  as  an  outlying  branch  of  the  Rajputs,  are,  indeed, 
commonly  supposed  to  have  some  strain  of  Mongolian  blood 
among  them,  but  Risley  doubts  if  this  opinion  is  well 
founded.  A  slight  degree  of  platyopy  is,  it  is  true,  met  with 
among  them,  but  this  may  equally  well  be  accounted  for  on 
the  supposition  of  their  affinity  to  the  platyrhine  type. 

The  nasal  index  of  the  dolichocephalic  tribes  that  are  of 
non-Aryan  descent  requires  a  further  analysis,  and  it  appears 
to  me  that  Mr.  Thurston's  researches  suggest  that  the  prob- 
lem is  more  complex  than  is  generally  admitted. 

On  looking  at  the  table  on  page  86,  we  are  struck  with 
the  fact  that  three  tribes,  the  Badagas,  Todas,  and  Kotas, 
have  the  least  variation  of  any  in  the  range  of  their  nasal 
indices.  They  have  lived  an  isolated  existence  on  the 
plateau  of  the  Nilgiri  Hills  until  the  settlement  of  the  Eng- 
lish in  recent  times,  and  we  may  with  safety  regard  them  as 
a  fairly  primitive  non-Aryan  people.  The  owners  of  the 
greatest  variation  (exceeding  a  range  of  30  units)  constitute 
a   group   of   Tamil  classes   made   up   of    Brahmans,    Pattar 


92  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Brahmans  descended  from  east-coast  Tamil  Brahmans,  and 
other  classes  that  I  have  not  copied  out ;  the  greatest  range 
is  found  among  the  Pariahs  of  Madras  City.  Mr.  Thurston 
measured  one  very  dark-skinned  Tamil  Pariah  cooly,  who 
was  5  ft.  3^  in.  (1608  mm.)  in  height,  and  whose  nose  was 
40  mm.  in  height,  42  mm.  in  breadth,  with  an  index  of  105 
(Plate  II.,  Fig.  1). 

The  least  variable,  that  is,  the  least  mixed,  of  these  groups, 
have  low  mesorhine  indices  (average  75.5);  the  most  variable 
have  higher  indices.  The  Paniyans,  with  the  highest  indices 
of  all,  have  a  moderate  amount  of  range. 

In  order  to  compare  among  themselves  the  Badagas, 
Todas,  Kotas,  and  Paniyans,  it  will  be  necessary  to  take 
other  data  into  consideration,  so  I  have  selected  a  few  from 
Mr.  Thurston's  tables. 

No.  of  Av.  Length        Av.  pa-:0i  Ratio  of 

Men  Ceph.  of  Nasal         a      1         Stature.        Span.         Span  to 

Measured.     Index.        Head.       Index.       AnSie-  Stat.=  ioo 

Badagas...   40    *       71.7         189         75.6         710      \\\  1717         104.6 

(5-4^ 

Todas 25  73.3         1 Q4         74.9         68°      -j  ^3         1750         103.2 

1629 


5-41 

Paniyans..  25     74     184    95.1    670  \   *5^4    1652 


Kotas 25     74.1    192    75.5    700  1683    103.3 

105 

The  Todas  possess  exactly  the  same  average  stature  as  the 
89,000  Germans,  whose  measurements  are  given  by  Gould, 
and  just  miss  being  included  with  the  English  among  the  very 
tall  races  of  the  world.  Between  the  Todas  and  the  next 
tallest  class  measured  by  Thurston,  the  Sheik  Muhammadans 
(1645  mm.),  there  is  a  well-defined  gap  of  51  mm.  (2  inches). 
The  tallest  men  he  came  across  were  a  Toda  (1850  mm.  = 
6  ft.  f  in.)  and  a  Badaga  (1832  mm.  =  6  ft.  J  in.).  The 
Paniyans  have  the  shortest  average,  and  also  have  the  rela- 
tively longest  arms. 

Measurements  which  are  useful  in  some  other  places  have 
no  diagnostic  value  in  Southern  India,  such,  for  example,  as 


THE  NOSE  93 

the  cephalic  index  and  the  facial  angle.  It  is,  however, 
worthy  of  note  that  the  Todas,  Kotas,  and  Badagas  have 
the  longest  heads  recorded  by  Thurston,  and  are  in  this 
respect  separated  from  the  Paniyans.  The  facial  angle, 
though  of  great  importance  in  separating  prognathous  from 
orthognathous  races,  is  of  little  use  as  an  aid  to  comparison 
and  classification  of  the  different  communities  of  Southern 
India,  in  whom  the  average  of  the  angle  of  Cuvier  (with  its 
vertex  at  the  edge  of  the  incisor  teeth)  ranges  in  the  people 
examined  by  Thurston  between  6j°  and  J\°.  Here,  again, 
only  the  Badagas  reach  710,  only  one  other  group  besides 
the  Kotas  reach  700,  and  only  the  Sheik  Muhammadans  and 
the  Paniyans  fall  as  low  as  6y°. 

Existing  materials  do  not  enable  us  to  prosecute  the 
analysis  much  further,  but  among  the  non-Aryan  tribes  of 
Southern  India  it  appears  as  if  we  could  trace  two  groups: 
(1)  a  taller,  with  moderately  long  arms,  with  long  heads,  and 
distinctly  dolichocephalic,  a  moderate  facial  angle,  and  a 
mesorhine  nose ;  (2)  a  very  short,  long-armed  group,  dolicho- 
cephalic, more  prognathous,  and  with  a  very  platyrhine  nose. 
The  Nilgiri  Hill  tribes  are  typical  examples  of  the  former 
group,  and  the  dark-skinned,  curly-haired  Paniyans  of  the 
latter  group. 

It  is  a  common  belief  among  the  European  planting  com- 
munity that  the  Paniyans  are  of  African  origin,  and  de- 
scended from  ancestors  who  were  wrecked  on  the  Malabar 
coast.  This  theory,  which  is  based  solely  on  their  general 
appearance,  breaks  down  on  investigation.  Of  their  origin 
nothing  definite  is  known.  An  interesting  account  of  these 
people  is  given  by  Thurston,  and  it  is  evident  that  we  are 
dealing  with  a  very  primitive  group  of  mankind,  who  have 
left  traces  of  their  former  greater  extension  in  the  broad 
noses  which  occur  among  the  lower  Hindu  castes. 

In  his  earlier  work  Dr.  Collignon,  like  other  French  an- 


94  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

thropologists,  was  inclined  to  place  great  value  on  the  nasal 
index  of  the  living  as  a  distinguishing  character  of  the  races 
of  Western  Europe.  Taking  the  three  main  constituents  of 
the  French  nation,  he  found  '  the  nasal  indices  came  out  in 
the  following  order: 

Kymri 63.39 

Mediterraneans 65.48 

Celts2 67.20 

And  he  naturally  thought  this  was  an  excellent  means  of 
further  distinguishing  between  the  tall,  dolichocephalic,  fair 
race  that  came  from  the  north,  the  fairly  short,  dolicho- 
cephalic, dark  race  of  the  south,  and  the  short,  brachy- 
cephalic,  dark  race  of  the  centre. 

In  the  same  paper  (p.  508)  Collignon  formulates  the  law 
that  "in  a  given  race  leptorhiny  is  in  direct  relation  to 
stature;  the  more  it  is  raised,  the  longer  the  nose,  the  lower 
it  is,  the  more  the  nose  tends  to  mesorhiny. " 

As  a  result  of  his  later  researches  Collignon  finds  that  the 
nasal  index  in  the  living  is  of  little  practical  value  in  French 
anthropology.      He  says3: — 

"  Like  the  stature,  the  nasal  index  has  received  a  serious  blow 
(from  being  in  the  front  rank  for  the  classification  of  European 
races).  It  is  true  that  this  character  maintains  its  incomparable 
value  for  the  separation  of  the  main  trunks  of  mankind,  but,  so 
far  as  concerns  the  European  races,  properly  so-called,  it  is  in- 
contestable that  its  value  is  diminished.  The  ethnic  scale,  which 
is  naturally  of  a  narrow  range  between  races  so  allied  to  one  an- 
other, may  be  neutralised  by  local  variations  in  height.     It  thus 

1  R.  Collignon,  "  Etude  anthropometrique  elementaire  des  principales  Races 
de  France,"  Bull.  Soc.  d'Anthrop.  de  Paris,  1883,  p.  502. 

2  This  term  is  used  in  Broca's  sense.     See  p.  121. 

3  R.  Collignon,  "Anthropologic  de  la  France;  Dordogne,"  etc.,  Mem.  Soc. 
d'Anih.  de  Paris  (3),  i.,  1894,  p.  43. 


THE  NOSE  95 


happens  that  the  importance  of  the  index  is  only  relative,  and 
that  it  loses  the  character  of  precision  which  we  formerly  credited 
it  with." 


We  must  now  pass  to  a  consideration  of  the  nose  from 
a  craniological  point  of  view.  In  the  skull  we  find  that 
the  prominent  part  of  the  nose  is  formed  of  two  elements, 
the  nasal  bones,  and  the  upper  jaw  or  maxillary  bones ;  the 
former  constitute  the  bridge  of  the  nose,  the  latter  bound 
the  lateral  and  inferior  margin  of  the  nasal  aperture,  and 
they  also  flank  the  nasal  bones  so  as  to  separate  them  from 
the  orbits.  The  nasal  bones  are  bounded  above  by  the 
frontal  or  bone  of  the  forehead.  The  mid-point  of  the 
fronto-nasal  suture  is  termed  by  anthropologists  the  nasion; 
the  corresponding  spot  in  the  living  nose  is  the  root.  The 
nasal  aperture  is  technically  called  the  apertura  pyriformis, 
the  lower  border  of  which  has  certain  characteristics  to 
which  reference  will  be  made.  In  the  middle  line  of  this 
lower  border  there  is  usually  a  bony  projection,  the  nasal 
spine,  which  is  continuous  with  the  gristly  and  partly  ossified 
nasal  septum.  There  is  no  need  to  refer  to  the  gristly  por- 
tions of  the  external  nose,  as  these  are  macerated  away  in 
dried  skulls,  and,  though  a  description  of  them  is  here 
omitted,  it  must  be  remembered  that  they  support  and  give 
the  form  to  the  nose  as  seen  in  the  living  subject. 

The  heigJit  of  the  nose  is  the  line  joining  the  nasion  to  the 
corresponding  point  at  the  base  of  the  nasal  spine. 

The  breadth  is  the  greatest  diameter  of  the  nasal  aper- 
ture. 

The  cranial  nasal  index  is  the  ratio  of  the  nasal  breadth 
to  its  height;  this  is  obtained  by  multiplying  the  former  by 
one  hundred  and  dividing  the  product  by  the  latter.  The 
indices  are  grouped  by  Broca  in  a  threefold  classification 
into  broad,  medium,  and  narrow  noses,  the  figures  being: 


96  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

FRENCH   AND  "  FRANKFURT 

ENGLISH.  AGREEMENT." 

-   48      Leptorhine     -    47 

48-53      Mesorhine     47-5 1 

53  -J-      Platyrhine    51  -f- 

The  nasal  indices  to  the  left  are  those  that  were  first  sug- 
gested by  Broca,  and  which  have  been  subsequently  adopted 
by  French  and  English  anthropologists;  to  the  right  are 
those  in  general  use  in  Germany,  as  accepted  at  the 
"  Frankfurter  Verstandigung." 

In  the  following  table  I  have  collected  from  Broca,  Top- 
inard,  Flower,  and  other  sources,  a  selection  of  nasal  indices. 
It  is  evident  that  we  have  here  the  same  story  that  is  told 
by  the  nasal  index  of  the  living.  The  black  races  are  platy- 
rhine, whether  they  come  from  Africa  or  Oceania.  The 
yellow  races,  including  the  Indo-Polynesians  and  Americans, 
are  mesorhine,  and  the  European  races  are  leptorhine. 

TABLE  OF  CRANIAL  NASAL  INDICES. 

PLATYRHINE    RACES. 

African. 

Bushmen 60.2  Kordofan 55.4 

Lower  Guinea 58.8  Upper  Guinea 55.2 

Kaffirs 57.8  Senegal 55.1 

Hottentots 57.3  Nubians 55.1 

Oceanic. 

Tasmanians 57.4  New  Caledonians 52.9 

Fijians 57.1  Papuans,  S.E 52 

Australians 56.9 

MESORHINE    RACES. 

Javanese 51.4  Chinese 49 

Malays  (various) 50.3  Polynesians 48 

Lapps 50.2  Japanese '.  . .    48 

Annamites 50.1  Americans 47.2 


THE  NOSE  97 

LEPTORHINE    RACES. 

Berbers  of  Biskra 48.9  English 46 

Italians  of  Lombardy ....   48.3  Syrians 45.8 

Egyptians 47.1  Arabs 45.5 

Russians 46.8  Berbers  (Kabyles) 44.2 

Parisians 46.7  Eskimo 43 

Auvergnats 46.2 

One  or  two  points  call  for  comment.  It  will  be  seen  that 
at  the  limits  of  each  group  there  are  indices  which  should 
numerically  be  placed  in  the  next  group.  For  example,  the 
New  Caledonians  and  the  Papuans  of  the  archipelago  at  the 
extreme  south-east  of  British  New  Guinea  have  mesorhine 
instead  of  platyrhine  indices;  this  is  due  directly  or  in- 
directly to  a  crossing  with  Polynesians.  Of  this  we  have 
direct  evidence  for  the  New  Caledonians,  and  I  have  adduced 
evidence  '  for  a  migration  from  the  Melanesian  Archipelago 
into  the  south-east  of  New  Guinea;  but  these  Melanesians 
had  already  been  subjected  to  Polynesian  influence.  The 
nasal  index  of  the  Polynesians  is  at  the  extreme  lower  end 
of  mesorhiny.  The  Berbers  of  Biskra  have  doubtless  had 
their  nose  broadened  by  Nigritic  mixture,  for  the  pure  Ber- 
bers are  among  the  most  leptorhine  of  men.  The  Lombard- 
ians  have  an  exceptionally  high  index  for  Europeans.  By 
their  exceptionally  low  index  the  Eskimo  are  sharply  sepa- 
rated from  the  Mongolic  and  American  races ;  this  fact  is  in 
harmony  with  their  very  dolichocephalic  cranium  (index 
about  72)  and  long  face.  The  exact  relationship  of  these 
interesting  people  is  not  yet  definitely  established. 

The  nasal  index  of  the  primitive  Andaman  Islanders 
(50.9)  and  that  of  the  nearly  equally  primitive  Veddahs 
(52.5)  are  smaller  than  one  might  expect,  as  these  races  are 
very   unspecialised    groups   of    mankind.       The    new-born 

1  A.  C.  Haddon,  "The  Decorative  Art  of  British  New  Guinea,"  Cunning- 
ham Memoir  X.,  Roy.  Irish  Acad.,  1894. 


98  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

French  infant,  according  to  Broca,  has  an  index  of  59.2, 
and  is,  consequently,  about  as  platyrhine  as  the  Bushmen 
of  South  Africa. 

One  word  of  warning  is  necessary :  although  the  nasal  in- 
dices in  the  living  and  in  the  skull  agree  very  well  as  a 
whole,  it  must  be  distinctly  understood  that  there  is  no 
necessary  relation  between  them.  It  is  impossible  even  to 
approximately  calculate  the  one  index  from  the  other. 

The  learned  Broca '  has  made  a  comparative  study  of  the 
nasal  index  in  the  skulls  of  Egypt  and  France,  and  in  both 
cases  he  has  proved  that  the  nasal  index,  despite  numerous 
crossings,  was  perpetuated  for  centuries  without  important 
changes. 

We  need  not  enter  into  a  discussion  concerning  the  ethnical 
relationships  of  the  earliest  population  of  Egypt ;  it  is  gen- 
erally admitted  that  they  were  fundamentally  a  branch  of 
the  great  Mediterranean  race,  but  there  is  no  doubt  that 
several  ethnic  elements  entered  into  their  composition.  The 
two  types  to  which  I  have  already  referred,  and  which 
Pruner-Bey  3  first  described  as  the  fine  and  coarse  types,  are 
found  in  the  subterranean  galleries  of  Sakkara,  which  belong 
to  the  IVth  Dynasty  (about  4000  B.C.),  and  equally  occur  in 
the  collections  of  skulls  of  the  ancient  Empire.  Whatever 
may  be  the  origin  of  the  fine  type,  it  is  only  the  coarse  type 
that  participates  in  the  characters  of  the  Nigritic  peoples  of 
Nubia.  This  prehistoric  mixture  must  have  been  already 
ancient  at  the  beginning  of  the  Pharaonic  period,  for  the 
characters  of  the  Egyptian  race  have  since  been  maintained 
with  a  remarkable  stability ;  whence  we  may  conclude  that 
the  effects  of  this  crossing  had  at  that  early  period  already 

1  P.  Broca,  "  Recherches  sur  l'indice  nasal,"  Rev.  d' Anthropologic,  i.,  1872, 
p.  1. 

?  Pruner-Bey,  "Recherches  sur  l'origine  de  l'ancienne  race  Egyptienne," 
Mem.  Soc.  d'Anth,  i.,  1861. 


THE  NOSE 


99 


arrived  at  this  condition  of  stability,  and  this  could  only  be 
realised  at  the  end  of  a  great  number  of  generations. 

The  nasal  index  of  the  skulls  of  the  IVth  Dynasty  had  a 
mean  of  47.93,  and  in  this  figure  one  may  recognise  the  in- 
fluence of  the  platyrhine  races  of  Nubia.  Let  us  now  see 
what  happened  to  the  nasal  index  in  later  times. 

It  is  known  that  in  the  Pharaonic  times  the  valley  of  the 
Nile  was  invaded  in  turn  from  the  south,  the  east,  and  the 
west,  and  thus  received  influences  from  the  Nubian  or 
Ethiopian  race,  from  the  Syro-Arab  or  Semitic  race,  and 
from  the  Lybian  or  Berber  race. 

The  Persian,  Macedonian,  and  Roman  conquests  further 
introduced  new  Asiatic  or  European  elements,  and  the 
Semitic  element  was  restored  more  fully  and  persistently  by 
the  Arab  conquest.  In  spite  of  all  these  mixtures,  the  nasal 
index  of  the  existing  Kopts  does  not  differ  perceptibly  from 
that  of  the  ancient  Graves. 

About  the  IVth  Dynasty1  (3998-3721  B.C.),  before  all 
these  invasions,  the  mean  nasal  index  was,  as  we  have  seen, 
47.93 ;  among  the  Kopts  of  the  nineteenth  century  it  is 
47. 15.  Is  this  because  all  the  people  who  were  successively 
established  in  Egypt  had  the  same  nasal  index  ?  By  no 
means;  for  the  index  of  the  victorious  Ethiopians  was 
greater,  whilst  that  of  the  Syro-Arab  peoples  and  of  the 
Berber  tribes  was,  on  the  contrary,  very  small.  MM.  Hamy 
and  Broca  obtained  twenty-two  skulls  from  an  ancient  inter- 
ment in  the  Island  of  Elephantine,  opposite  to  Assouan,  at 
the  foot  of  the  First  Cataract,  near  the  border  of  Upper 
Egypt  and  Nubia;  the  nasal  index  was  55.17. 

It  is  known  that  the  Vlth  2  Dynasty  (3503-3322  B.C.)  had 

1  The  dates  of  the  dynasties  are  those  given  by  Flinders  Petrie  in  his  History 
of  Egypt,  2d  ed.,  i.,  1895,  p.  252. 

2  Broca  says  "Vlth  Dynasty,"  but  according  to  Flinders  Petrie  {History  of 
Egypt,  i.,  p.  69),  the  Vth  Dynasty  (3721-3503  B.C.)  was  of  Elephantine  origin. 


IOO  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

its  origin  in  Elephantine.  So  much  for  the  Ethiopians. 
As  to  the  Syro-Arabs,  there  is  no  doubt  they  had  a  very 
small  nasal  index,  since  that  of  recent  Arabs  is  only  45.57, 
and  that  of  Syrians  45.87.  There  remain  the  Lybian  and 
Berber  peoples,  who  established  themselves  in  the  Delta 
during  the  XlXth  Dynasty,  and  who  later,  under  Psammet- 
ik,  gave  a  dynasty  to  Egypt.  It  is  admitted  that  these 
peoples  have  a  remarkably  low  nasal  index.  Broca  measured 
ten  Kabyle  (Berber)  skulls  that  had  an  index  of  44.28,  and 
some  Guanches,  who  belonged  to  the  same  race,  had  an 
index  of  44.25. 

At  the  Xlth  Dynasty  (2821-2778  B.C.),  after  the  Dynasty 
of  Elephantine,  which  was  the  Vlth,  and  which  lasted  for 
over  two  hundred  years,  the  index  rose  to  48.43.  Under 
the  XVIIIth  Dynasty  (1 587-1327  B.C.),  which  followed  close 
the  long  domination  of  Syro-Arab  pastoral  kings,  it  was 
maintained  at  48.77;  under  the  dynasties  that  followed, 
until  the  Macedonian  period,  it  descended  to  47.28.  These 
are  insignificant  oscillationsjand  quite  as  insignificant  is  the 
change  which  has  followed  the  Arab  conquest  of  the  seventh 
century,  as  the  existing  Kopts  have  an  index  of  47. 15.  One 
sees  then,  that  if  the  mixtures  of  races  have  been  able  to  ex- 
ercise a  slight  influence  on  the  nasal  index  of  the  Egyptians, 
this  influence  has  only  been  temporary. 

MEAN    NASAL  INDEX  OF  EGYPTIANS  AT  VARIOUS   PERIODS. 

(from  broca.) 

Nasal  Index.  Cranial  Index. 

Fourth  Dynasty 47-93  76.40 

Eleventh  Dynasty 48.43  75-40 

Eighteenth  Dynasty 48.77  76.02 

Later  Dynasties  (up  to  the  Ptolemys) 47.28  73-38 

Average  of  Ancient  Egypt 47.88  75-58 

Modern  Egypt  (Kopts) 47-15  76.39 

The  persistence  of  the  nasal  index  has  not  been  less  re- 


THE  NOSE  IOI 

markable  among  the  peoples  who,  from  the  most  remote 
periods,  have  occupied  the  soil  of  France. 

For  the  Mammoth  Period,  Broca  has  only  two  skulls  from 
Eyzies,  whose  indices  were  48.98  and  45.09.  The  mean. in- 
dex of  these  would  be  47,  but,  as  Broca  points  out,  the  true 
average  index  is  the  index  of  the  means  and  not  the  mean  of 
the  indices  ;  as  the  nasal  heights  in  these  cases  were  24  and  22 
(mean  23),  and  the  breadths  51  and  49  (mean  50),  the  index 
of  the  means  is  46. 

The  neolithic  series  is  not  homogeneous,  but  we  may 
conclude  that  the  peoples  of  the  Polished-Stone  Age,  so  far 
as  is  known,  were  leptorhine. 

MEAN    NASAL   INDEX   OF   ANCIENT   AND   MODERN    POPULA- 
TIONS OF  FRANCE. 
(from  broca.) 

Nasal  Index.  Cranial  Index. 

Mammoth  Period  (Eyzies) 46  74-25 

Neolithic  Period 46.93  75. 01 

Bronze  Age  (Orrony) 46.89  79.26 

Gauls  of  the  Iron  Age 45.68  76.93 

Gallo-Romans  (Third  and  Fourth  Century) 46.74  78.55 

Merovingians  (Seventh  Century) 48.87  76.36 

Parisians  (Twelfth  Century)   48.25  79. 18 

"         (Sixteenth  Century) 47-97  79-56 

"         (Nineteenth  Century) 46.81  79-44 

The  low  index  remains  constant  through  the  Bronze  Age. 
The  fifteen  Gaulish  skulls  of  the  Iron  Age  measured  by 
Broca  belonged  to  at  least  a  century  before  the  conquest  by 
Caesar.     The  Roman  invasion  did  not  modify  the  index. 

Most  of  the  Merovingian  skulls  came  from  a  cemetery  at 
Chelles.  The  interment  belonged  to  somewhat  different 
dates,  but  it  is  probable  that  most  of  the  skulls  belong  to 
the  second  half  of  the  seventh  century.  Eleven  more 
ancient  skulls,  that  were  found  in  a  lower  layer,  have  a 
mean  index  of  51.52;  the  more  recent  series  of  forty-four 


102  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

skulls  average  48.83 ;  the  total  mean  of  the  Chellian  skulls 
being  49.36.  The  nasal  index  of  some  Merovingian  skulls 
found  at  Champlieu  descends  to  47.58. 

Amid  all  these  variations  one  fact  shines  clear,  that  in  all 
the  Merovingian  graves  the  nasal  index  is  markedly  above 
that  of  the  earlier  populations  of  France.  The  Franks  then 
brought  to  the  country,  which  received  its  name  from  them, 
a  new  nasal  type.  In  any  case  it  is  certain  that  the  Franks 
had  a  nasal  index  of  over  48,  consequently  they  were  not 
leptorhine  like  the  people  of  Western  Europe,  but  mesorhine 
like  the  Mongolic  peoples.  They  belonged  to  the  white- 
skinned,  fair-haired,  Teutonic  race,  but  must  be  regarded  as 
a  distinct  variety  of  it.  There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that 
we  have  here  traces  of  those  remnants  of  the  mesorhinic 
hordes  of  Attila  who  fled  towards  Pannonia. 

Wherever  they  came  from,  or  however  they  acquired  their 
nose,  the  arrival  of  the  Franks  augmented  in  a  marked  man- 
ner the  mean  nasal  index  of  the  population  of  Southern 
Gaul. 

We  will  now  follow  the  modifications  of  the  nasal  index 
in  later  periods.  Under  the  three  Frankish  kings  Paris  be- 
came the  capital  of  Neustria.  The  aristocratic  class  congre- 
gated there  and  were  so  numerous  as  to  escape  better  than 
elsewhere  the  effects  of  mixture.  In  the  twelfth  century 
the  mean  nasal  index  of  the  Parisians  was  still  mesorhinic, 
but  it  had  already  descended  from  48.87,  the  mean  number 
of  the  Merovingians,  to  48.25 — an  index  that  is  nearly  lepto- 
rhine. In  the  succeeding  centuries  it  continued  to  diminish, 
and  at  present  it  has  returned  to  the  figure  (46.81)  that  it 
had  before  the  Frankish  period,  and  the  influence  of  the 
foreign  race  has  now  disappeared  from  the  mean  nasal 
index. 

Concerning  the  nasal  bones  it  may  be  noted  that  among 


THE  NOSE 


103 


the  white  races  they  are  usually  arched  and  prominent; 
among  the  yellow  races,  the  Malays,  and  the  Negroes,  they 
are  flat.  They  are  often,  in  addition,  short  and  very  broad 
among  the  Negroes,  and  frequently  long  and  narrow  among 


Fig.  14. 
The  Lower  Border  of  the  Apertura  Pyriformis  of  Orang-Utan  ;  from  Hovorka. 

the  Chinese.  The  bridge  of  the  nose  is  almost  always  flat 
in  infants,  and,  as  we  have  just  seen,  it  usually  remains  so  in 
the  lower  races,  and  it  frequently  also  persists  in  this  condi- 
tion in  women  of  higher  races. 

Lastly,  I  must  draw  attention  to  the  variations  that  occur 
in  the  lower  margin  of  the  apertura  pyriformis. 

In  the  apes  the  floor  of  the  nasal  cavity  passes  insensibly 
on  to  the  surface  of  the  upper  jaw,  and  there  is  consequently 
no  definite  inferior  border  to  the  nasal  aperture.  This  con- 
dition may  obtain  among  human  skulls,  and  it  is  known  by 
the  name  of  simian  groove. 

Of  more  frequent  occurrence  than  the  last  is  the  condition 
which  is  characteristic  of  the  human  infant,  in  which  the 
floor  of  the  nasal  chamber  passes  by  a  variable  but  distinct 
angle  on  to  the  surface  of  the  maxilla.  This  is  termed  the 
forma  infantilis. 

The  characteristic  human  condition  is  that  in  which  the 
lower  border  of  the  pyriform  aperture  is  formed  by  a  dis- 
tinct thin  ridge  which  sharply  cuts  ofT  the  floor  of  the  nasal 
cavity  from  the  alveolar  portion  of  the  maxilla.  This  is  the 
forma  antliropina. 


04 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


In  some  skulls  there  is  a  pair  of  depressions  immediately 
external  to  the  lower  border  of  the  apertura  pyriformis. 
These  are  known  as  the  fosses  prenasales. 

a  bed 

Fig.  15. 

The  Four  Types  of  the  Lower  Border  of  the  Apertura  Pyriformis  in  Man  ; 

from  Hovorka. 

a.  Forma  Anthropina  (Lower  Austrian,  30  years  old) ;  b.  Fossae  Prenasales  (Bavarian, 
49  years  old);  c.  Forma  Infantilis  (child,  2%  years  old) ;  d.  Simian  Groove  (Java- 
nese, 28  years  old). 

It  frequently  happens  that  a  skull  with  a  forma  infantilis 
may  be  transitional  between  the  simian  groove  on  the  one 
hand  or  between  a  forma  prenasalis  or  a  forma  anthropina 
on  the  other.  No  well-defined  limits  separate  these  various 
conditions. 

Hovorka '  gives  the  following  statistics  concerning  the 
distribution  of  these  varieties  among  various  peoples : 

No.  examined.  Anthrop.         Prenasal.  Infant.  Simian. 

191  Germans 131  10  44  6 

187  Cechs 117  21  40  9 

57  Austrians 49  2  4  2 

82  Russians 46  14  18  4 

34  Magyars 16  5  9  4 

16  Gypsies 11  1  2  2 

133  Greeks 83  4  42  4 

71  Italians 54  2  15  — 

16  Mummies 9  —  6  I 

15  Chinese 0 5  3  6  1 

22  Malays 7  2  8  5 

10  Peruvians 5  1  4  — 

93  Negroes 24  9  25  35 

927  557  74  223  73 

1  O.  Hovorka  (Edl.  von  Zderas),  Die  sEussere  Nase,  eine  anatomisch-anthro- 
pologische  Studie,  Vienna,  1893.  (This  paper  contains  an  extensive  bibliog- 
raphy.) 


THE  NOSE  105 

Speaking  in  general  terms  one  may  say  that  the  simian 
groove  is  most  frequent  in  the  Negroes,  Australians,  and  the 
black  races  generally.  The  infantile  condition  is  common 
among  Negroes,  the  yellow  races,  and  Southern  Europeans. 
The  fossae  prenasales  are  also  frequent  among  the  yellow 
races,  while  the  forma  anthropina  is  characteristic  of  the 
Northern   Europeans.1 

1  Since  the  above  was  in  type.  Professor  A.  Macalister  has  written  a  paper  on 
"  The  Apertura  Pyriformis"  {Journ.  Anat.  and  Phys.,  xxxii.,  January,  1898, 
p.  223),  in  which  he  describes  these  four  conditions,  to  which  he  gives  the  fol- 
lowing names  :  Orygmocraspedote  (simian  groove),  Amblycraspedote  (forma 
infantilis),  Bothrocraspedote  (fossae  prenasales),  Oxycraspedote  (forma  anthro- 
pina). 


CHAPTER  V 

THE  ETHNOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGNE 
DISTRICT 

I  HAVE  previously  alluded  to  the  brilliant  ethnographical 
work  done  by  Dr.  Collignon,1  and  I  have  made  an  ab- 
stract of  his  researches  in  the  Dordogne  District  of  West 
Central  France  in  order  to  demonstrate  the  lines  upon  which 
such  inquiries  should  be  conducted,  and  to  illustrate  the  re- 
sults that  follow  from  a  blending  of  anthropological  investi- 
gations with  the  records  of  history.  We  have  here  a  very 
happy  example  of  an  anthropological  analysis  which  supplies 
the  data  for  a  subsequent  historical  synthesis. 

The  region  under  consideration  consists  partly  of  the  cal- 
careous beds  and  partly  of  primitive  rocks  of  the  Central 
Plateau  of  France;  the  limiting  line  between  them  is  shown 
on  the  map(Fig.i9);  to  the  east  it  passes  into  the  mountainous 
mass  of  Auvergne.  The  five  Departments  which  constitute 
this  region  are  traversed  from  east  to  west  by  the  gradually 
decreasing  elevations  of  the  Limousin  Mountains,  which 
serve  as  barriers  between  the  three  basins  of  the  Dordogne, 
or  rather  of  its  right  affluents,  the  Dronne,  Isle,  Vezere,  and 
Correze;  of  the  Charente  and  of  the  left  affluents  of  the 
Loire,  the  Vienne,  Gartempe,  Creuse,  and  Cher.  A  line 
running  roughly  north  and  south,  starting  at  the  junction 

1  R.  Collignon,   "Anthropologic  de  la  France:   Dordogne,  Charente,  Cor- 
reze, Creuse,  Haute- Vienne,"  Mem.  Soc.  d'Anlh.  de  Paris  (3),  i.,  1894. 

106 


ETHNOGRAPHY   OF  THE  DORDOGNE  DISTRICT      107 

of  Charente  and  Haute-Vienne  and  passing  not  far  to  the 
east  of  Perigueux,  would  separate  the  fertile  district  to  the 
west  from  the  poor  lands  to  the  east.  At  certain  points  in 
the  latter,  as  in  the  Limousin,  the  valleys  are  rich,  but  the 
uplands  are  infertile,  and  produce  only  chestnuts  and  scanty 
cereals. 


'   N 


tf  ,******< 


n*£   r 


Fig.  16. 
Sketch  Map  of  the  Dordogne  District. 


The  physical  features  of  the  population  studied  by  Dr. 
Collignon  are  mainly  those  of  the  conscripts  for  the  xiie 
Corps  d'armee,  who  are  recruited  from  these  five  Depart- 
ments. 


io8 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


The  characters  are  given  in  the  order  of  importance  that 
Dr.  Collignon  allocates  to  each. 

CEPHALIC  INDEX. 

This  index  is  the  ratio  of  the  breadth  of  the  head  to  its 
greatest  length,  the  latter  being  taken  as  ioo.  In  dealing 
with  skulls,  anthropologists  usually  arrange  the  indices  in 
three  groups:  (i)  Dolichocephals,  with  an  index  of  less  than 
75  ;  (2)  Mesaticephals,  with  an  index  between  75  and  80;  (3) 
Brachycephals,  having  an  index  of  over  80.  It  is  the  prac- 
tice of  some  anthropologists  to  deduct  two  units  from  the 
corresponding  index  of  the  living  head  so  as  to  reduce  the 
cephalic  to  the  cranial  index. 

There  is  a  tendency  at  present  not  to  lay  too  much  stress 
upon  these  purely  empirical  divisions,  and  some  would  raise 
the  upper  limit  of  dolichocephaly  two  or  three  units. 

The  following  table  gives  the  distribution  of  the  cephalic 
indices  in  the  five  Departments ;  in  the  case  of  Dordogne  a 
further  analysis  is  made,  which  proves  that  the  southern 
part  of  that  Department  is  much  more  brachycephalic  than 
the  northern.  The  mean  index  of  this  Department,  if  alone 
considered,  gives  extremely  little  information. 

CEPHALIC  INDEX— PROPORTION  PER  CENT. 


CHA- 

RENTE. 

HAUTE- 
VIENNE. 

CREUSE. 

CORREZE. 

DOR- 
DOGNE. 

NORTH 

DOR- 
DOGNE. 

SOUTH 
DOR- 
DOGNE. 

67-69 

•17 

.22 

.30 

70-74 

5.60 

3.78 

.58 

5.95 

8.24 

75-79 

41-95 

37.81 

19.24 

6.9O 

38.30 

48.53 

11.54 

80-84 

41.82 

42.86 

62.38 

43-27 

39.46 

37.63 

44-22 

85-89 

10.85 

14.71 

I6.92 

41.73 

13.83 

5.00 

39.92 

90-94 

•50 

.84 

.88 

7-93 

2.13 

.30 

6.93 

95-97 





.17 

.11 

•39 

Mean  index 

80.43 

8O.93 

82.16 

84-93 

8O.7O 

.... 

ETHNOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGNE  DISTRICT      109 

It  is  evident  that  this  table  indicates  considerable  differ- 
ences in  the  ethnic  constitution  of  each  Department.  Tak- 
ing the  extremes,  we  have,  on  the  one  hand,  North  Dordogne 
with  its  8.5  per  cent,  of  indices  below  75,  or  Charente  with 
5.7  per  cent,  and  only  .5  per  cent,  of  ultrabrachycephals, 
and  Correze  on  the  other,  which  has  no  dolichocephal  below 
75,  but  has  8.1  per  cent,  of  indices  over  90. 

Taken  as  they  stand,  the  great  majority  of  these  indices 
fall  into  the  brachycephalic  division,  while  very  few  are  doli- 
chocephalic. 

The  mean  index  of  the  French  population  being  83.57, 
Dr.  Collignon,  in  order  to  simplify  matters,  describes  as 
brachycephals  those  indices  above  83.  The  cantons  which 
come  under  this  grouping  form  a  compact  mass  to  the  south 
and  south-east,  as  is  seen  in  the  map  on  the  following  page. 
To  the  north  there  are  two  islands  in  which  the  index  does 
not  exceed  83.8. 

Inversely,  and  as  a  matter  of  convenience,  he  regards  as 
dolichocephalic  all  the  regions  in  which  the  index  is  less  than 
80.  Two  large  groups  of  dolichocephalic  cantons  are  isolated 
by  this  means ;  the  more  important  covers  two-thirds  of  the 
Department  of  Dordogne  (the  valleys  of  the  Isle  and  of  the 
Dronne),  and  about  one-half  of  Charente,  mainly  to  the  south 
and  south-east.  The  other  has  Limoges  for  a  centre  and 
the  seven  cantons  that  surround  it. 

In  the  narrow  band  of  country  between  these  two  groups 
the  index  is  81. 

This  clearly  defined  distribution  is  of  the  greatest  import- 
ance, for  alone  it  provides  a  key  to  the  local  ethnography. 

Another  point  not  less  worthy  of  attention  is  the  clear 
manner  in  which  these  two  head  types  are  separated  :  (1)  be- 
tween the  two  Departments  of  Dordogne  and  Correze;  (2) 
between  the  two  portions  of  Dordogne  which  are  separated 
by  the  rivers  Vezere  and  Dordogne. 


110  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

As  a  matter  of  fact  the  boundary  between  the  two  Depart- 
ments of  Dordogne  and  Correze  was  formerly  precisely  that 
between  Perigord  and  Limousin,  and  in  earlier  times  be- 
tween the  Petrocorii  and  Lemovices.  To  the  right  of  this 
entirely  conventional  frontier  the  indices  run  from  85.4  to 
87.3,  while  to  the  left  they  vary  from  78.7  to  81.4,  but  there 


Fig.  17. 

The  Distribution  of  the  Cephalic  Index  in  the  Dordogne  District  ; 
after  Collignon. 

Areas  with  an  index  of  less  than  80,  shaded  ;  those  between  80  and  83, 
left  blank  ;  those  over  83,  cross-hatched. 

is  nothing  in  history  to  explain  this  discrepancy.  The  ex- 
planation appears  to  be  that  well  before  the  Conquest  the 
two  peoples  differed  in  race,  the  one  being  what  Caesar  called 


ETHNOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGNE  DISTRICT      III 

Celts,  the  other  probably  belonging  to  the  people  whom  he 
named  Aquitainians. 

The  southern  portion  of  Dordogne  is  also  brachycephalic 
and  Celtic,  and  so  Dr.  Collignon  is  inclined  to  think  that  it 
did  not  form  part  of  the  territory  of  the  Petrocorii,  but  that 
it  should  be  divided  among  the  Nitiobriges  and  Cadurci, 
whose  equally  brachycephalic  descendants  still  people  Lot- 
et-Garonne  and  Lot. 

Another  line  of  evidence  supports  this  conclusion.  It  is 
known  that  the  primitive  episcopal  dioceses  corresponded  to 
the  territories  of  the  ancient  Roman  civitates,  since  a  bishop 
was  established  in  each  city  by  the  emperors.  Whilst  the 
northern,  eastern,  and  western  frontiers  of  the  diocese  of 
Perigueux  correspond  very  closely  with  those  of  the  modern 
Department,  the  region  south  of  the  V£zere  belongs  to  the 
Bishop  of  Cahors,  which  tends  to  show  that  the  natives  of 
the  south  of  Dordogne  are  the  descendants  not  of  the 
Petrocorii,  but  of  the  Cadurci. 

The  differences  between  the  two  parts  of  Limousin,  of 
which  the  one  forms  part  of  Correze  and  the  other  the  south 
of  Haute-Vienne,  can  be  explained  in  an  analogous  manner. 
The  former  is  brown  and  brachycephalic,  while  the  latter  is 
fair  and  dolichocephalic. 

One  may  well  believe  that  the  Lemovices,  those  of  the 
neighbourhood  of  Limoges,  were  no  more  Petrocorii  than 
Celtae,  but  a  fair  people  of  Belgic  or  Germanic  origin,  estab- 
lished in  Celtica,  who  had  overlorded  the  ancient  brachy- 
cephalic people  who  there  preceded  them. 

Inversely,  Briva-Curetia,  another  old  Gaulish  town  of 
Limousin,  was  the  centre  of  gravitation  of  the  first  inhabit- 
ants, if  not  their  capital. 

In  Charente  there  is  only  one  canton  in  which  the  mean 
index  rises  over  83.  In  this  canton  of  Chabanais  is  the 
small  village  of  Chassenom  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Vienne. 


112 


/ 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


It  is  interesting  to  see  the  old  Celtic  race  here,  preserved 
with  a  relative  purity,  still  grouped  around  the  ruins  of  its 
oppidum  (Cassinodunum),  where,  compared  with  the  rest  of 
the  Department,  it  appears  as  an  island  surrounded  by  the 
combined  flood  of  brown  and  fair  dolichocephals. 

COLOUR  OF  THE  HAIR  AND  EYES. 

A  statistical  inquiry  concerning  the  distribution  of  the 
colours  of  the  eyes  and  hair  leads  to  the  following  results. 
The  browns  predominate  markedly  over  the  blonds.  But 
for  a  group  of  cantons  in  Creuse  all  the  district  should  be 
ranged  under  the  brown  or  moderately  brown  categories. 

In  the  following  table  the  numbers  are  in  relation  to  IOO; 
the  differences  between  ioo  and  the  fairs  and  the  darks  re- 
present the  eyes  and  hair  of  intermediate  tint : 


EYES. 

HAIR. 

HALF-SUM  OF 
EYES  AND  HAIR. 

EXCESS 
OF 

Blue. 

Dark. 

Fair. 

Dark 

and 

Black. 

Black 
only. 

Light. 

Dark. 

DARK 
OVER 
LIGHT. 

Haute-Vienne 

Creuse 

36-7 
34-7 
33-8 
29.5 
34-2 

24.6 

23-3 
23.6 

23-3 
23.6 

21.8 
21.9 
17.2 
15-4 
15.0 

49.6 

53-9 
57-6 

58.4 
66.3 

5-25 
6.12 
5.80 
3.80 
12.05 

29.2 

28.3 

25-5 
22.3 
24.6 

37-1 
38.6 
40.6 
40.9 
45-0 

7.9 
I0.3 
15. I 
18.6 
20.4 

Charente 

Correze 

Dordogne 

On  comparing  this  table  with  the  map,  it  will  be  seen 
that  although  Dordogne  has  an  absolute  greater  number  of 
blonds  than  Correze  it  is  relatively  darker,  owing  to  the  fact 
that  the  darks  are  greatly  in  excess  in  certain  cantons ;  in 
other  words,  Dordogne  is  more  patchy  and  Correze  more 
uniform  in  the  distribution  of  their  hair  and  eye  colours.  It 
is  evident  that  in  using  the  word  blond,  this  term  is  employed 
in  only  a  relative  sense.     It  is  with  this  reserve  and  for  the 


ETHNOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGNE  DISTRICT      113 

sake  of  convenience  that  the  term  blond  will  be  employed. 
In  the  most  blond  group,  that  in  the  neighbourhood  of 
Aubusson  in  Creuse,  the  blonds  amount  to  only  33.6  per 
cent. — that  is  to  say,  one-third. 


Fig.  u 

The  Distribution  of  Combined  Hair  and  Eye  Colour  in  the  Dordogne  District ; 

after  Collignon. 
Excess  of  browns  from  o  to  10,  shaded  ;  10  to  30,  blank  ;  over  30,  cross-hatched. 


In  order  to  gain  a  clear  conception  of  the  distribution  of 
the  hair  and  eye  colours,  it  will  be  simpler  to  assume  the 
whole  region  as  originally  inhabited  by  a  brown  population, 
and  then  to  follow  the  probable  route  of  the  blonds. 

The  most  important  spot  where  the  blond  type  is  best 
preserved  is  the  east  of  the  Department  of  Creuse,  especially 


114  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

the  plateau  of  Gentioux  and  the  upper  basin  of  the  river 
Cher  and  of  its  left  affluents. 

The  second  relatively  blond  region  has  Limoges  for  its 
centre.  In  certain  spots  the  type  is  preserved  with  a  re- 
markable purity,  particularly  among  the  women.  Dr.  Col- 
lignon  was  very  much  struck  with  the  resemblance  of  these 
to  the  women  of  Cotentin  in  Normandy.  It  appears  that 
the  blonds  radiate  from  Limoges  in  four  directions:  (i)  to- 
wards the  north  in  the  direction  of  the  old  Roman  road  of 
Argentomagus  and  Avaricum  (Argentan  and  Bourges),  later 
the  route  to  Paris — that  is  to  say,  along  the  road  which 
united  this  town  with  the  great  blond  centres  of  the  north 
of  France;  (2)  towards  the  east  where  it  joins  with  blonds 
of  the  Cher  region ;  (3)  to  the  west  in  the  direction  of  An- 
gouleme ;  and  (4)  southwards  towards  Perigueux. 

The  third  route  of  blond  immigration  would  be  the  route 
from  Paris  to  Bordeaux  through  Angouleme. 

Limoges  formed  a  centre,  and  towards  the  four  points  of 
the  compass  lay  four  very  ancient  and  important  towns, 
Avaricum  (Bourges),  Gergovia  (Clermont),  Vesuna  (Peri- 
gueux), and  Ecolisma  (Angouleme). 

The  latter  town  was  the  only  one  of  the  four  that  was  not 
united  to  Limoges  either  by  a  Roman  road  of  the  first  order, 
or  later  by  a  postal  route ;  and  we  find  that  in  the  region 
between  these  towns  the  blonds  are  deficient.  The  import- 
ance of  the  communications  between  Limoges  and  Bordeaux 
through  Perigueux  is  affirmed  by  the  long  line  of  blonds 
which  occur  along  that  route.  To  take  a  biological  simile, 
Limoges  represents  a  ganglion  protruding  its  nerve  fibres  in 
all  directions  towards  other  similar  ganglia. 
/  The  distribution  of  black  hair  is  worthy  of  note.  In 
I  Dordogne  it  is  marked  in  la  Double,  in  the  valleys  of  the 
rivers  Dordogne,  Isle,  and  Dronne.  Secondary  centres  ex- 
tend towards  the  north  of  Charente  and  of  Creuse.     There 


ETHNOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGME  DISTRICT      WJ 

Inversely  the  high  statures  are  also  at  a  minimum,  Haute- 
Vienne  having  the  least  proportion  of  tall  people  and  the 
greatest  population  of  short  people  of  any  Department  of 
France. 

Bondin  and  Broca  considered  that  this  remarkable  short- 
ness was  purely  a  question  of  race,  the  normal  smallness  of 
the  brachycephals.  This  very  simple  explanation  will  no 
longer  suffice,  in  the  presence  of  the  dolichocephaly  proved 
for  Dordogne,  Charente,  and  Haute-Vienne.  If  we  com- 
pare the  maps  of  the  distribution  of  the  cephalic  index  with 
those  of  colour  and  stature,  and  mentally  superimpose  them, 
we  find  that  there  is  absolutely  not  a  shadow  of  a  relation 
between  them.  The  "  black  spot  "  extends  alike  over  the 
brachycephals  of  Correze,  the  brown  dolichocephals  of  Dor- 
dogne, and  the  fair  dolichocephals  of  Haute-Vienne.  There 
is  then  no  relation  between  this  demonstrated  phenomenon 
and  race. 

Some  anthropologists  seek  a  cause  in  the  geological  char- 
acter of  the  soil;  but  here  as  in  Brittany  and  Cotentin  it 
explains  nothing.  It  is  true  that  the  line  of  separation  be- 
tween the  granites  and  crystalline  rocks  on  the  east  and 
the  calcareous  beds  on  the  west  runs  pretty  closely  along 
the  southern  border  of  the  black  spot;  but  we  also  find  the 
greatest  number  of  high  statures  on  the  granites,  and  the  low 
statures  flourish  equally  well  on  the  Liassic  and  Cretaceous 
calcareous  beds  of  Sarladais  and  Riberacois. 

The  only  plausible  explanation  is  the  social  condition,  and 
in  this  case  it  is  summed  up  in  the  expressive  French  term 
la  miscrc.  The  steep  slopes  and  barren  soil  only  produce 
poor  cereals,  rye,  barley,  and  buckwheat.  The  natives  live 
on  these,  and  on  milk  and  chestnuts.  Communication  is 
difficult;  no  great  tillage  as  in  the  fertile  valleys  of  the 
Vienne  and  Gartempe,  none  of  the  larger  industries  that 
enrich  a  people.     "  In  the  cantons  of  Vigeois,  Uzerche,  and 


Il8  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Treignac  in  Correze,"  writes  M.  Vacher,  "  the  population  is 
settled  in  confined  valleys,  in  deep  gorges  receiving  little 
light  and  air,  with  an  impermeable  subsoil  and  marshy 
ground."  In  a  poor  country  the  most  elementary  hygiene 
is  unknown,  the  death-rate  is  raised,  and  organic  defects  are 
more  frequent  than  elsewhere.  One  of  the  more  direct 
corollaries  of  misery  is  ignorance.  In  many  other  parts  of 
France,  such  as  in  the  Hautes-Alpes  and  Sologne,  poverty 
is  allied  with  ignorance,  and  results  in  the  degeneration  of 
the  race. 

THE   NASAL   INDEX. 

The  nasal  index  is  the  ratio  of  the  breadth  of  the  wings 
of  the  nose  to  its  length,  the  latter  being  measured  from  the 
root  of  the  nose  to  where  the  septum  passes  into  the  upper 
lip.  The  narrow  noses  (leptorhines)  are  those  with  an  index 
below  JO ;  the  mesorhines  range  from  70  to  85  ;  while  the 
broad  noses  (platyrhines)  are  those  above  85. 

The  mean  nasal  index  is  68.8,  but  the  individual  range  is 
enormous,  49.9  to  96.4,  that  is,  more  than  46  units.  As  a 
whole,  the  mesorhine  indices,  i.  e.}  those  over  70,  are  massed 
in  the  centre  of  the  five  Departments. 

This  distribution  follows  in  the  main  that  of  the  stature. 
But  why  ?  Simply  in  accordance  with  a  law  previously  thus 
formulated  by  Collignon :  "  Ina  given  race,  leptorhiny  is  in 
direct  relation  to  stature ;  the  higher  this  is  raised  the  longer 
the  nose,  the  lower  the  height  the  more  the  nose  tends  to 
mesorhiny. "  ' 

A  careful  consideration  of  the  data  tends  to  show  that, 
independent  of  stature,  the  brachycephals  possess  a  mean 
nasal  index  of  about  69,  that  is  to  say,  very  near  mesorhiny, 
which  is  in  agreement  with  previous  investigations.  The 
dolichocephalic  races  are  more  leptorhine. 

1  "Etude  anthropometrique  elementaire  des  principales  Races  de  France," 
Bull.  Soc.  d'Anthrop.  de  Paris,    1883,  p.  508. 


ETHNOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGNE   DISTRICT 


II9 


One  result  of  this  inquiry  is  that  the  value  of  the  nasal 
index  has  received  a  serious  blow.  Certainly  this  character 
is  very  important  for  the  discrimination  of  the  great  trunks 
of  mankind,  as  has  been  abundantly  proved  in  anthropo- 
logical investigations  in  India,  but  so  far  as  the  European 
nations  are  concerned  it  is  incontestable  that  the  nasal  index 
has  only  a  subsidiary  and  relative  value. 

HEIGHT   INDICES  OF   THE   CRANIUM. 

The  importance  of  the  vertical  height  of  the  cranium  as  a 
racial  character  has  been  emphasised  by  Virchow,  but  Col- 
lignon  was  the  first  to  study  this  factor  in  the  living.  The 
two  height  indices  are  obtained  by  comparing  the  total 
height  of  the  head  measured  from  the  vertex  to  the  centre 
of  the  ear-hole  with,  (1)  the  length  of  the  head,  and  (2)  its 
greatest  breadth,  each  of  these  two  diameters  being  taken 
as  100. 

The  indices  are  classified  as  follows : 


Platycephals 
Mesocephals 
Hypsicephals 


HEIGHT-LENGTH 
INDEX. 


-67 
67  —  70 
70    + 


HEIGHT-BREADTH 
INDEX. 


-83 
83-85 
85    + 


A  really  high  skull,  if  it  is  very  broad,  may  appear  rela- 
tively low,  or  a  low,  but  very  narrow  head,  may  appear  de- 
cidedly hypsicephalic.  Hence  the  necessity  to  consider  first 
the  cephalic  index,  and  thereby  to  recognise  the  normal  and 
harmonic  fluctuations  of  the  inverse  variations  of  these  two 
vertical  indices. 

Dr.  Collignon  has  plotted  the  distribution  of  these  indices 
for  the  Department  of  Dordogne  alone.  We  have  seen  that 
the  northern  cantons  are  what  he  termed  dolichocephalic, 


120  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

and  the  southern  are  brachycephalic.  The  length-height  in- 
dex of  the  former  varies  from  65  to  68,  and  of  the  latter 
from  70  to  72.  Taking  the  mean  at  66  and  70  respectively, 
it  follows  that  the  dolichocephals  are  platycephalic  and  the 
brachycephals  hypsicephalic ;  but  this  platycephaly  is  a  true 
flattening  of  the  skull,  and  is  not  merely  due  to  a  lengthen- 
ing of  the  cranium,  as  it  is  not  the  most  dolichocephalic 
cantons  that  are  the  most  platycephalic. 


Fig.  20.  Fig.  21. 

Distribution  of  the  Height-length  In-       Distribution  of  the  Height-breadth  In- 
dex in  Dordogne  ;  after  Collignon.  dex  in  Dordogne  ;  after  Collignon. 

70  -f-       Hypsicephalic  (shaded)  85  -J- 

67  -  70  Mesocephalic  (blank)  83  -  85 

-  67  Platycephalic  (cross-hatched)  81  —  83 

The  oblique  band  enclosed  with  a  thick  line  corresponds  to  the  division  between 
the  dolichocephals  and  brachycephals.    (See  Fig.  17.) 

On  the  other  hand,  all  the  brachycephalic  cantons  have 
a  height-breadth  index  of  from  81  to  84,  that  is,  they  are, 
or  appear  to  be,  platycephalic  and  mesocephalic,  but  their 
mean  is  mesocephalic. 

The  mixed  race  which  inhabits  the  zone  between  the 
brachycephals  and  dolichocephals  (cephalic  index  80-82)  is 


ETHNOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGNE   DISTRICT      121 

also  intermediate  with  a  height-breadth  index  of  83-85,  but 
the  dolichocephals  fall  into  two  groups ;  the  one  with  indices 
from  85  to  87  are  hypsicephalic,  the  others,  like  the  brachy- 
cephals,  are  mesocephalic  and  platycephalic. 

Thus  the  platycephaly  of  the  valley  of  the  Isle  is  estab- 
lished. 

The  brachycephals  are  only  false  platycephals  owing  to 
an  exaggeration  of  the  transverse  diameter. 

Without  going  into  further  details,  we  may  now  make  an 
attempt  to  unravel  the  ethnology  of  these  five  Departments. 
Taking  the  three  characters  of  cephalic  index,  colour,  and 
stature,  we  can  distinguish :  short  and  dark  or  tall  and  fair 
brachycephals;  fair,  tall  dolichocephals  and  dark  dolicho- 
cephals. 

The  brachycephals  occupy  all  the  region  south  of  the 
rivers  Dordogne  and  V£zere,  the  whole  of  the  Department 
of  Correze  and  the  east  of  that  of  Creuse.  The  brown 
brachycephalic  type  extends  to  the  mountainous  region  of 
Auvergne,  to  the  east  of  France  and  to  the  south  of  Ger- 
many. This  race  of  short,  dark  brachycephals  is  a  well- 
marked  type  which  has  received  several  names.  Dr. 
Collignon,  for  want  of  a  better  term,  adopts  Broca's 
designation  of  Celts,  as  the  founder  of  French  anthropology 
considered  that  these  were  essentially  the  Celtse  of  Caesar. 
They  are  often  called  Auvergnats.  The  tall,  fair  variety  is 
due  to  a  crossing  of  this  type  with  the  fair  race.  A  similar 
racial  mixture  occurs  in  Lorraine. 

The  fair  dolichocephals  inhabit  the  upper  valley  of  the 
Cher;  the  neighbourhood  of  Limoges,  whence  they  spread 
to  the  south,  following  the  plateaux  that  separate  the  valleys 
of  the  Isle  and  of  the  Dordogne;  and  also  the  north  of 
Charente,  Angouleme,  and  in  general  along  the  very  ancient 
route  between  Paris  and  Bordeaux.     These  are  the  modified 


122  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

descendants  of  the  tall,  fair,  dolichocephalic  race  of  North 
Europe.      Dr.  Collignon  speaks  of  it  as  the  Hallstadt  race. 

The  brown  dolichocephals  require  further  analysis. 

(i)  A  type  can  be  distinguished  which  is  characterised  by 
its  relative  platycephaly,  the  extreme  broadening  of  the  face, 
a  prominent  chin,  low  orbits,  and  by  the  dark  colour  of  the 
skin  and  hair.  As  it  is  usual  in  Europe  to  correlate  a  long, 
narrow  face  with  a  long  head,  and  a  short,  broad  face  with  a 
rounded  head,  the  association,  as  in  this  case,  of  a  long  head 
with  a  broad  face  forms  what  is  termed  a  disharmony.  In 
the  fair  dolichocephals,  on  the  other  hand,  the  head  is  high, 
the  face  narrow,  the  chin  moderately  prominent,  the  orbits 
normal,  the  skin,  hair,  and  eyes  fair.  It  is  obvious  that 
these  two  races  are  entirely  distinct. 

(2)  A  narrow-faced  dolichocephal  with  a  high  head  can  be 
distinguished,  but  Dr.  Collignon  believes  that  it  is  a  cross 
between  two  races,  the  brown  and  the  fair  dolichocephals. 
This  is  a  very  favourable  combination,  and  gives  rise  to  a 
beautiful  variety  of  man. 

(3)  A  rare  but  recognisable  type,  with  an  extraordinarily 
narrow  and  elongated  face,  a  retreating  forehead,  projecting 
jaws,  and  retreating  chin ;  the  concave  nose  is  so  broad  as  to 
be  nearly  platyrhine,  the  hair  and  skin  are  dark. 

Putting  the  second  of  these  two  varieties  out  of  count, 
there  only  remain  the  brown  dolichocephal  with  a  dishar- 
monic  face,  and  that  with  a  retreating  chin.  They  both 
live  in  the  basin  of  the  Isle  and  its  affluents,  as  much  in 
Charente  as  in  Dordogne. 

From  numerous  other  investigations  we  know  that  the 
Neolithic  dolichocephals  of  Western  and  Southern  Europe 
were  a  slight  people  with  brown  hair.  They  constitute  the 
Mediterranean  race  of  Sergi,  the  western  branch  being  gen- 
erally termed  Iberians.  The  ancient  cave-men  of  France 
belong  to  the  same  race ;  by  comparing  certain  indices  of 


ETHXOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGNE  DISTRICT 


123 


these  with  the  first  group  of  our  brown  dolichocephals,  we 
find  a  remarkable  correspondence  ' : 


Caverne  de  l'homme  mort. 
Old  man  of  Cro-Magnon  . 
Recent  Dordogne 


CEPHALIC  INDEX. 


Dolicho. 


HEIGHT-LENGTH 
INDEX. 


Platyceph. 


HEIGHT-BREADTH 

INDEX. 


Mesoceph. 

Platy. 

Platy.  &  Meso. 


Further,  the  Cro-Magnon  man  had  a  disharmonic  face; 
this  is  also  characteristic  of  the  Neolithic  dolichocephal  of 
Laugerie,  and  it  survives  in  their  descendants  in  the  valley 
of  the  Isle. 

The  remaining  brown  dolichocephalic  type,  with  its  low- 
typed,  long,  narrow,  prognathous  face,  is  considered  by  Dr. 
Collignon  to  be  the  far-removed  descendants  of  the  Quarter- 
nary  race  of  Canstadt  and  Spy.  The  same  type  has  been 
recognised  by  him  in  Tunis  among  the  Berbers  of  Djerid 
(his  race  Getu/e),  as  well  as  in  Dordogne  and  in  the  south  of 
Charente ;  that  is  to  say,  in  places  still  occupied  by  the  de- 
scendants of  the  race  of  Cro-Magnon.  It  might  be  expected 
that  the  very  ancient  race  of  Canstadt  and  the  later  race 
of  Cro-Magnon  were  together  beaten  back  by  the  great  pre- 
historic invasions  of  Western  Europe. 

A  few  words  will  suffice  to  trace  the  prehistoric  settle- 
ments and  racial  movements  that  have  occurred  in  this 
district. 

The  earliest  inhabitants  were  probably  the  people  with 
retreating  chins.  According  to  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Colli- 
gnon these  were  kinsmen  to  Palaeolithic  man.  At  the  present 
day,  as  is  only  to  be  expected,  this  type  is  very  rarely  met 
with  in  anything  like  purity,  and  it  is  very  difficult  to  isolate 
it  statistically. 

1  These  indices  are  taken  from  a  subsequent  memoir  by  Dr.  Collignon 
(Mem.  Soc.  d'Anlh.  de  Pat-is  J,  i.  (3e  ser.),  1S95,  pp.  94,  95- 


124  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

The  whole  west  of  Europe  was  later  occupied  by  the 
brown  dolichocephals,  the  Iberian  branch  of  the  great  Med- 
iterranean race,  of  which  the  Cro-Magnon  man  was  a  variety. 
They  buried  their  dead  in  the  caves  of  the  valleys  of  the 
Vezere,  Isle,  and  Dronne.  Judging  from  their  art  they 
were  a  skilful  people,  and  not  devoid  of  culture : 

"  Later  he  pictured  an  aurochs — later  he  pictured  a  bear — 
Pictured  the  sabre-toothed  tiger  dragging  a  man  to  his  lair — 
Pictured  the  mountainous  mammoth,  hairy,  abhorrent,  alone — 
Out  of  the  love  that  he  bore  them,  scribing  them  clearly  on 
bone."  ' 

There,  protected  in  their  barren,  rocky  valleys,  weathering 
the  storm  of  race  conflict,  unsubmerged  by  waves  of  race 
migration,  still  survive  the  children  of  early  Neolithic  man. 

Also  in  Neolithic  times  a  short,  dark  brachycephalic  folk 
came  into  France  from  the  east  by  two  routes  flowing  north 
and  south  of  the  Alps.  The  invasion  followed  the  left  bank 
of  the  Danube,  entered  the  valley  of  the  Rhine,  and  later 
spread  into  France  through  the  pass  of  Belfort  and  by  the 
lower  Moselle.  A  second,  probably  later  and  less  import- 
ant, invasion  crossed  the  river  to  reach  Upper  Italy  and 
Switzerland,  and  thence  gained  the  valley  of  the  Rhone. 
Thus  their  migration  has  been  from  east  to  west. 

When  the  invasions  came  of  the  tall,  fair  dolichocephals, 
Kymri,  Gauls,  Cimbrians,  Burgundians,  Visigoths,  Franks, 
etc.,  they  more  particularly  followed  a  course  parallel  to  the 
North  Sea.  From  an  ill-determined  point  to  the  north-east 
or  north  they  advanced  invariably  along  the  plains,  probably 
on  account  of  the  chariots  which  they  always  brought  with 
them.  After  having  covered  the  plains  of  North  Germany, 
where  since  then  their  descendants  have  always  lived,  and 
which  became  a  second  centre  for  emigrations,  they  passed 

1  Rudyard  Kipling,   "  The  Story  of  Ung,"    The  Seven  Seas,  1896. 


ETHNOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGNE  DISTRICT      1 25 

to  the  north  of  the  Black  Forest  to  scatter  upon  the  Nether- 
lands and  Flanders,  the  valley  of  the  Seine  and  that  of  the 
Rhine.  Thence  their  swarms  were  divided  by  the  central 
plateau  of  France;  one  stream  being  diverted  into  Italy,  the 
other  into  Spain,  and  thence  to  North  Africa. 

The  Roman  conquest  scarcely,  if  at  all,  affected  the  popu- 
lation of  these  five  Departments,  and  it  is  more  than  certain 
that  since  then  no  foreign  element  has  produced  any  result 
that  can  be  traced,  for  all  the  barbarians,  as  well  as  the 
English,  belonged  to  the  fair  race. 

In  a  subsequent  memoir  on  the  anthropology  of  the  South- 
west of  France  {Mem.  Soc.  d' AntJirop.  de  Paris,  i.,  3e  ser., 
40  fascic,  1895),  Dr.  Collignon  sums  up  his  conclusions  as 
follows : 

Such  is,  after  an  examination  of  anatomical  characters, 
the  distribution  of  the  races  in  the  south-west  of  our  country. 
Is  it  possible  to  draw  therefrom  reliable  indications  of  what 
it  was  formerly  ?  Regarding  this  we  may  lay  down  this 
rule :  When  a  race  is  well  seated  in  a  region,  fixed  to  the 
soil  by  agriculture,  acclimatised  by  natural  selection  and 
sufficiently  dense,  it  opposes  (for  the  most  precise  observa- 
tions confirm  it)  an  enormous  resistance  to  absorption  by 
the  newcomers,  whoever  they  may  be. 

The  most  striking  example  of  this  stability  of  seated 
races,  of  this  force  of  inertia  which  renders  them  victorious, 
is  certainly  presented  to  us  by  Egypt.  The  modern  Fellah  dif- 
fers in  nowise  from  his  ancestors  of  several  millenniums  ago, 
who  lived  at  the  times  of  Thothmes  and  Rameses,  although, 
according  to  the  calculations  of  M.  Hamy,  slavery  had  in- 
troduced upon  the  borders  of  the  Nile  more  than  twenty 
millions  of  negroes.  These,  in  a  climate  which  at  first  sight 
would  be  favourable  to  their  acclimatisation,  were  not  able 
to  perpetuate  their  race,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  that 
is  to  say,  by  crossing.     All  the  more  reason,  one  may  say, 


126  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

that  the  same  can  be  said  of  the  historic  conquerors  of  this 
unfortunate  country,  from  the  Hyksos  and  the  Persians 
down  to  the  Turks  and  the  latest  comers,  the  English.  The 
waves  of  foreign  blood  that  have  spread  over  Egypt  have 
disappeared  never  to  return. 

The  reasons  are  many.  If  the  aboriginal  race  is  more 
numerous  than  its  invaders,  and  this  is  nearly  always  the 
case,  it  cannot  be  entirely  destroyed ;  whatever  be  the 
slaughter  which  accompanies  the  conquest,  the  women  and 
the  children  are  preserved.  The  importance  of  the  subse- 
quent crossings  cannot  then,  at  the  maximum,  attain  more 
than  one  third.  The  stable  condition  that  follows  puts  then, 
ipso  facto,  the  newcomer  in  a  minority  from  the  commence- 
ment of  the  conquest,  the  work  of  selection  by  acclimatisa- 
tion does  the  rest.     It  is  a  matter  of  a  few  generations. 

The  only  case  where  the  occupation  can  be  definitive  is 
that  of  an  invasion  by  a  very  superior  race  emigrating  with 
women  and  children  to  a  region  peopled  by  nomads  or  true 
savages,  such  as  the  occupation  of  the  United  States  or  of 
Australia  by  the  Europeans.  In  Canada,  despite  the  politi- 
cal occupation  and  the  incessant  arrival  of  emigrants  of  their 
own  blood,  the  English  are  absolutely  balanced  by  the  old 
French  element,  who  were  masters  of  the  soil  before  their 
arrival. 

But  the  presence  of  woman  at  the  time  of  a  conquest,  if 
she  is  indispensable  to  a  real  and  definitive  colonisation, 
since  alone  it  ensures  the  perpetuity  of  pure  descendants,  is 
not,  however,  sufficient.  Except  in  a  savage  country,  the 
women  of  the  conquering  party  would  always  be  in  a  minor- 
ity. Even  in  the  case  where  restrictive  laws  would  assure 
to  their  progeny  particular  privileges,  making  a  kind  of 
aristocracy,  it  could  never  happen  that  there  would  be  only 
two  strata  of  the  population,  a  victorious  aristocracy  super- 
imposed upon  a  conquered  democracy.     We  know  the  fate 


ETHNOGRAPHY  OF  THE  DORDOGNE  DISTRICT      1 27 

of  all  aristocracies.  Their  grandeur  is  their  ruin;  they  sur- 
vive thanks  only  to  foreign  relays,  and  on  an  average  dis- 
appear in  three  or  four  centuries.  One  cannot  say  "  Vce 
victis,  "but  ' '  Vce  victoribus  ' '  ;  everything  comes  to  him  who 
waits. 

The  Romans  did  not  systematically  depopulate  Gaul — her 
submission  satisfied  them ;  the  distribution  of  races  at  the 
time  of  the  Roman  peace  did  not  undergo  other  changes 
than  those  which  could  operate  quite  locally,  the  deporting 
of  a  too  obstreperous  people  or  colonising  by  veterans.  The 
Barbarians  passed  like  a  torrent,  they  destroyed  much,  but 
they  have  not  made  in  their  campaigns  a  true  colonisation, 
"  ense  et  aratro  "  of  Marshall  Bugeaud.  The  sword  sufficed 
to  assure  their  domination;  to  the  vanquished  —  work. 
They  have  disappeared,  except  perhaps  in  the  towns  where 
they  crossed  with  the  Gallo-Roman  middle  class,  after  having 
preserved  the  forms  of  the  imperial  administration,  for  want 
of  knowing  and  of  being  able  to  do  better.  The  Arabs 
traversed  the  country  but  to  disappear  immediately.  It 
results,  once  more  let  it  be  repeated,  that  the  present  dis- 
tribution of  races  should  faithfully  represent  to  us  their  an- 
cient distribution,  except  in  places  where  special  economic 
conditions  have  been  slowly  modified,  but  in  a  constant 
manner,  by  foreign  influences. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  EVOLUTION  OE  THE  CART 

IT  is  a  truism  that  the  commonest  objects,  those  that  we 
see  around  us  every  day,  usually  fail  to  arouse  any  in- 
terest as  to  their  significance  or  origin.  One  of  the  great 
benefits  of  travel  is  to  awaken  interest  in  even  the  most 
trivial  matters  of  daily  life,  and  this  is  usually  accomplished 
through  the  diversity  in  their  appearance  from  that  which 
we  are  accustomed  to  see  at  home. 

We  who  live  in  Britain,  for  example,  see  carts  every  day, 
but  do  we  ever  wonder  what  has  been  their  history  ?  We 
accept  the  finished  product  and  there  leave  it,  little  thinking 
that  in  the  sister  isle  there  still  persist  strange  survivals  from 
the  twilight  of  history  which  afford  suggestive  clues  of  the 
forgotten  stages  in  the  evolution  of  our  common  cart. 

In  this  case  no  distant  travel  is  necessary;  there  is  no  need 
to  go  to  Asia  or  Africa,  nor  even  to  the  remote  parts  of 
Europe.  At  our  very  door,  so  to  speak,  have  we  the  links  in 
the  chain  of  evidence ;  scarce  one  is  missing.  Probably  such 
a  sequence  cannot  be  found  in  any  other  country  in  the 
world. 

The  history  of  the  cart  is  one  chapter  of  a  much  greater 
study — that  of  transport.  The  civilisation  of  the  world  and 
the  spread  of  culture  are  bound  up  with  facility  of  transport, 
including  in  this  term  the  means  of  conveyance  and  porter- 
age, and  the  routes  traversed. 

128 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART  1 29 

Without  doubt  the  most  primitive  means  of  transport  was 
what  an  American  anthropologist  has  termed  "  the  human 
beast  of  burden."  This  has  always  been  an  important,  but 
it  tends  to  become  a  diminishing,  factor,  though  it  can  never 
be  entirely  replaced  by  other  means.  The  absence  of  any 
other  method  of  porterage  is  a  sure  sign  of  that  low  stage 
of  culture  which  is  termed  savagery.  Its  extensive  employ- 
ment in  higher  grades  of  culture  is  due  to  slavery.  Slave 
raiders  load  their  human  chattels  with  objects  of  merchan- 
dise, to  sell  ultimately  the  whole  caravan.  The  great  archi- 
tectural and  engineering  works  of  pagan  antiquity  were 
possible  only  through  slave  or  forced  labour.  It  would 
appear  from  this  that  under  certain  conditions  human 
labour  is  more  economical  than  beast  labour,  but  sooner  or 
later  man  has  been  in  most  places  largely  replaced  by  the 
beast,  and  the  beast  is  being  replaced  by  the  freight  train 
and  other  mechanical  modes  of  transport. 

A  professional  carrier  can  carry  continuously  greater 
weight  than  an  ordinary  man ;  and  fifty,  one  hundred,  two 
hundred  pounds,  and  even  greater  weights  are  on  record  as 
usual  weights  for  a  day's  journey.  As  soon  as  man  learnt 
to  domesticate  animals  he  found  that  more  could  be  carried 
upon  their  backs  than  upon  his  own.  So  the  pack-animal 
marks  the  next  stage  of  development. 

In  some  parts  of  the  west  of  Ireland  there  are  no  good 
roads,  and  everything  has  to  be  carried  by  human  beings, 
or  on  packs  by  horses  and  asses.  Even  where  the  roads  are 
good,  as  in  the  islands  of  Inishbofin  and  Inishshark,  off  the 
coast  of  Galway,  they  may  be  used  only  for  foot  traffic,  as 
there  are  no  wheeled  vehicles  of  any  description,  and  all 
goods  are  carried  either  in  hampers  slung  on  a  person's  back 
(the  usual  method  of  taking  home  potatoes  and  peats),  or  in 
two  wicker  panniers  or  cleaves,  slung  across  the  back  of  a 
pony  or  donkey. 


130  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

With  the  building  of  good  roads  the  primitive  means  of 
transport  are  being  superseded  by  later  methods ;  but  these 
new  means  of  porterage  are  examples  of  the  latest  mechan- 
ical developments',  the  centuries  of  slow  transition  have 
been  skipped,  and  light  railways  already,  and  auto-cars, 
may  in  the  immediate  future  follow  closely  on  the  heels 
of  the  old-time  human  beast  of  burden  and  his  dumb 
companions. 

By  and  by  it  came  to  be  discovered  that  an  animal  could 
draw  considerably  greater  weights  than  it  could  carry.  A 
porter  who  goes  short  distances  and  returns  unloaded  can 
carry  135  pounds  seven  miles  a  day,  but  the  same  man  can 
carry  in  a  wheelbarrow  150  pounds  ten  miles  a  day,  that  is, 
half  as  much  again. 

When  the  red-skins  of  America  shift  camp  they  trail  their 
tent-poles  behind  their  horses,  pack  up  all  their  goods  and 
chattels  in  the  skin  tent,  and  tie  the  bundle  on  to  the  poles. 
They  are  then  free  to  move  wherever  they  choose.  Even 
the  dogs  may  be  employed  to  carry  smaller  loads  on  trailing 
stakes.  This  is  a  natural  device,  but  one  wonders  how  these 
nomad  hunters  managed  in  the  horseless  pre-Columbian 
days.  $K^ 

Captain  Burt,  in  his  celebrated  Letters  from  a  Gentleman 
in  the  North  of  Scotland  to  his  Friend  in  London  (1754),  gives 
an  illustration  of  a  vehicle  consisting  of  two  poles  drawn  by 
a  small,  ill-kempt  pony.  The  body  of  the  cart  is  formed  by 
two  pieces  of  wood  bent  in  a  semi-circle,  the  ends  of  which 
are  fastened  to  the  shafts,  the  one  close  behind  the  pony 
and  the  other  a  little  distance  behind,  and  the  arches  are 
steadied  at  the  top  by  a  piece  of  wood  running  from  the 
one  to  the  other.  Thin  pieces  of  wood,  osiers  perhaps, 
pass  at  intervals  across  the  floor  and  ends  of  this  very  primi- 
tive contrivance. 

Sir  Arthur  Mitchell  found  at  Strathglass,    Kintail,   and 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART  131 

elsewhere,  in  the  years  1863  and  1864,  carts  in  use  without 
wheels  exactly  of  the  kind  just  described;  these  are  figured 
by  Dr.  Mitchell  in  his  suggestive  book,  The  Past  in  the 
Present. 

If  this  vehicle  has  died  out  in  Wales  it  must  have  done  so 
very  recently ;  at  all  events  it  is  still  in  full  use  in  certain 
parts  of  Ireland,  notably  in  the  Glens  of  Antrim. 

On  looking  at  the  illustrations  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
Irish  slide-car  is  primitive  enough.    Two  shafts  are  harnessed 


Fig.  22. 
Slide-Car,   Inverness  (1754) ;  after  Burt. 

on  to  a  horse,  and  the  ends  which  drag  on  the  ground  are  shod 
with  short  runners  or  shoes ;  sometimes  the  runners  lie  their 
whole  length  on  the  ground,  or  more  generally  they  are 
tilted  up  so  as  to  have  pretty  much  the  same  slant  as  the 
shafts  (Plate  III).  These  runners,  which  do  not  appear  in 
the  figures  given  by  Sir  Arthur  Mitchell,  are  a  useful  addi- 
tion, as  they  save  the  lower  ends  of  the  shafts  from  wear 
and  tear.  The  shafts  are  kept  apart  by  cross-bars.  In  one 
car  in  Plate  III.,  2,  three  holes  are  seen  in  the  last  cross- 
bar, in  which  upright  stakes  can  be  inserted,  as  in  the  car  in 
the  background  of  Plate  IV.,  Fig.  1,  to  retain  the  corn  or 
the  whins  (as  furze  is  called  in  Ireland)  from  slipping  down 
behind.  The  lashing  of  a  wicker  basker  or  creel  on  to  the 
shafts  is  an  obvious  step  in  advance,  and  these  are  used  to 


132  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

bring  down  potatoes  from  the  fields  or  turfs  from  the  mount- 
ain. The  straw  harness  in  the  lower  figure  of  Plate  III.  is 
an  interesting  survival,  and  that,  combined  with  the  slide- 
car,  carries  us  back  to  very  primitive  times. 

The  modern  Irish  name  for  this  wheelless  cart  is  the  same 
as  the  old  Gaelic  name,  Carr  Sliunain.  Dr.  Sullivan  J  states 
that  there  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  the  Irish  Carr  is  a 
loan-word  from  the  Latin  Carrus,  the  stem  Car  being  prob- 
ably common  to  the  Latin,  the  Germanic,  and  the  Celtic 
languages. 

The  Irish  warrior  of  ancient  times  habitually  carried  a 
couple  of  spears,  and  a  native  poet,  singing  of  the  pursuit 
of  a  certain  warrior,  tells  us  that — 

tL  The  track  of  his  two  spears  through  the  marsh 
Was  like  the  ruts  of  a  car  over  weak  grassy  stubbles." 

The  phrase  "  weak  grassy  stubbles  "  refers  to  the  rich 
after-grass  of  soft  meadows.2  This  is  perhaps  the  first  refer- 
ence to  the  slide-car. 

Dr.  Mitchell  strikes  a  note  of  warning  that  is,  perhaps, 
not  unneeded. 

11  When  I  saw,"  he  says,  "  what  these  carts  were  employed  in 
doing,  namely,  transporting  peats,  ferns,  and  hay  from  high 
grounds  down  very  steep  hills  entirely  without  roads,  I  saw  that 
the  contrivance  was  admirably  adapted  for  its  purpose,  and  that 
wheeled  carts  would  have  been  useless  for  that  work.  But  I  saw 
more  than  this ;  I  saw  that  these  carts  were  used,  doing  the  exact 
analogue  of  what  is  done  every  day  in  the  advanced  south. 
When  boulders,  for  instance,  are  removed  on  sledges  from  the 
fields  in  which  they  have  been  turned  up;  when  trees  are  trans- 
ported on  sledges  from  the  high  grounds  on  which  they  have  been 
cut ;  when  a  heavily  laden  lorry  puts  on  the  drag  as  it  comes  down- 

1  W.  K.  Sullivan,  Introduction  to  E.  O'Curry,  Manners  and  Customs  of  the 
Ancient  Irish,  1873,  i.,  p.  cccclxxvi.  2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  ccccxliii. 


Plate  III. 


Fig.  i.     Slide-Car,  County  Antrim  ;  from  a  photograph  by  Welch. 


•       Hsrl'i. 


Fig.  2.     Slide-Car,  County  Antrim  ;  from  a  photograph  by  the  Author. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART  1 33 

hill — what  is  it  that  we  see  but  carts  without  wheels — carts  with- 
out wheels  preferred  to  carts  with  wheels,  whenever  the  circum- 
stances in  which  they  are  to  be  used  makes  the  want  of  the  wheels 
an  advantage.  It  is  not  always  an  evidence  of  capacity  or  skill 
to  use  elaborate  or  fine  machinery.  A  rough,  rude  tool  may  for 
certain  purposes  be  the  most  efficient,  and  may  show  wisdom  both 
in  its  contriver  and  employer.  It  would  certainly  show  a  want 
of  wisdom  in  the  Kintail  Highlanders,  if  they  used  wheeled  carts 
to  do  the  work  they  require  of  their  wheelless  carts.  Indeed, 
they  could  not  so  use  them,  except  by  putting  the  drag  on  hard 
and  fast — being  first  at  the  trouble  of  getting  wheels,  and  then  at 
the  trouble  of  preventing  them  from  turning." 

The  same  argument  can  be  applied  to  Ireland.  In  a  very 
hilly  country  half  the  time  one  is  going  up-hill  and  the 
other  half  down-hill;  when  going  up-hill  there  is  no  load, 
and  consequently  the  slide-car,  being  so  very  light,  is  prac- 
tically of  no  weight  for  a  horse.  Coming  down-hill  with  a 
load  a  rigid  vehicle  has  to  be  employed  in  any  case,  and  so 
the  slide-car  is  equally  efficient,  the  chief  drawback  being 
that  it  can  carry  so  little,  but  this  is  not  of  much  account  in 
small  holdings.  The  slide-car  has,  further,  the  great  recom- 
mendation of  being  made  easily  and  cheaply  without  requir- 
ing the  services  of  a  skilled  carpenter  or  wheelwright.  It  is 
also  as  easily,  repaired,  and  all  the  materials  are  ready  to 
hand. 

It  is  also  interesting  to  note  that  these  very  primitive 
carts  can  be  constructed  entirely  of  wood  and  thongs,  or 
ropes,  and  there  is  no  necessity  for  any  metal  to  be  em- 
ployed. 

We  now  come  to  a  gap  in  the  evidence  of  the  evolution- 
ary history  of  the  cart  that  is  not  easy  to  fill.  What  was 
the  precursor  of  the  wheel  ?  There  can  be  little  doubt  that 
the  wheel  was  derived  by  slow  modification  of  an  antecedent 
object,  and  there  is  a  strong  presumption  that  this  "  missing 


134  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

link  "  was  a  roller,  but  there  does  not  appear  to  be  any 
positive  evidence  to  render  this  view  absolutely  certain. 

The  mechanical  principle  of  the  roller  was  known  to  re- 
mote antiquity,  and  it  is  generally  accepted  that  the  great 
stones  of  megalithic  monuments,  such  as  menhirs,  crom- 
lechs, and  the  like,  were  transported  in  this  manner,  as  we 
know  were  the  great  statues  of  Assyria  and  Egypt. 

It  is  not  presupposing  too  much  to  surmise  that  a  cylin- 
drical tree-trunk  might  be  placed  beneath  the  shafts  of  a 
slide-car,  or  of  a  sledge,  in  order  to  reduce  the  friction.  A 
constructional  problem  arises  from  the  difficulty  of  keeping 
it  in  position.  This  could  be  overcome  in  the  former  by 
placing  a  short  roller  between  the  shafts  and  fixing  a  pin  in 
the  centre  of  each  end  of  the  roller,  which  could  then  re- 
volve in  a  notch  in  the  shafts,  as  in  the  accompanying 
diagram  (Fig.  23),  or  between  two  pegs,  as  in  the  Portu- 
guese cart  (Fig.  31). 

We  must  imagine  a  further  development,  which  is  also 
missing  from  Ireland,  in  the  reduction  of  the  central  por- 
tion. This  would  become  the  practice  as  soon  as  man  dis- 
covered that  efficiency  was  increased  by  reducing  the  long 
frictional  surface,  and  that  the  weight  was  lessened. 

Herr  Stephan,  the  late  enlightened  Postmaster-General 
of  the  German  Empire,  to  whom  we  owe  the  introduction 
of  the  post-card,  described,  according  to  Poesche,1  a  very 
primitive  cart  that  he  saw  in  Portugal.  A  log  is  cut  from 
the  trunk  of  a  large  tree,  the  central  portion  is  hacked  away 
so  as  to  leave  a  solid  disc  at  each  end  joined  by  an  axle. 
Poesche  also  mentions  an  ancient  Egyptian  battle  scene,  in 
which  a  large  Aryan  woman  is  depicted  carrying  off  a 
wounded  brother,  husband,  or  son,  on  a  waggon  with  similar 
wheels,  drawn  by  oxen. 

This  explanation  of  the  origin  of  wheels  has  been  adopted 

1  T.  Poesche,  Die  Arier,  1878.  p.  08. 


THE   EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART 


135 


by  various  writers  '  who  have,  however,  regarded  the  sledge 
as  the  parent  of  the  cart,  as  it  was  on  sledges  that  the  colossal 
statues  of  Egypt  and  the  winged  bulls  of  Assyria  were  rolled. 
Dr.  E.  Hahn,  however,  in  his  learned  and  suggestive  essay, 
Demeter  und  Banbo,  argues  against  this  view.      He  thinks 


Fig.  23. 
Diagrams  Illustrating  a  Probable  Evolution  of  Wheels  from  a  Roller. 

that  in  this  case  wheeled  vehicles  would  have  arisen  wher- 
ever rollers  have  been  employed ;  but  it  is  not  so,  the 
waggon  arose  only  in  the  district  from  which  agriculture 
originally  spread.  He  believes  that  the  waggon  was  primi- 
tively a  holy  implement  consecrated  to  the  great  goddess  of 
agriculture  and  fertility,  and  that  it  only  subsequently  be- 
came a  secular  farm  implement. 

Dr.  Hahn  definitely  states  as  his  belief  that  the  waggon 
has   arisen   because  the  wheel  existed.     The  wheel  in  its 

1  Reuleaux,  Theoretische  Kinematik,  Braunschweig,  1875,  p.  204  ;  Kine- 
matics of  Machinery. 

E.  B.  Tylor,  "On  the  Origin  of  the  Plough  and  Wheel-carriage,"  Journ. 
Anth.  Inst.,  x.,  1880,  p.  74- 


136  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

most  simple  form  is  only  a  disc  pierced  through  the  centre. 
Such  discs  of  stone,  clay,  etc.,  occurred  in  the  same  culture 
district  as  that  in  which  agriculture  arose,  and  was  at  the 
same  time  an  implement  and  a  religious  object.  This  is  the 
spinning  whorl,  and  the  sacred  symbols,  such  as  the  svas- 
tika,  on  numerous  whorls  from  Hissarlik,  suggest  that  they 
were  often  used  as  votive  offerings.  As  spinning  was  an 
occupation  of  the  women,  these  whorls  were  probably  dedi- 
cated to  a  female  divinity,  presumably  to  the  goddess  of 
Nature  and  generation. 

It  is  only  necessary  to  stick  two  or  four  of  these  whorls 
on  one  or  two  pieces  of  stick,  and  to  fasten  something  over 
the  axis,  and  a  waggon  would  result.  That  these  whorls 
are  not  large  explains  also  the  small  size  of  many  holy  wag- 
gons. Later,  following  this  model,  large  waggons  were 
made,  and  these  holy  waggons  were  drawn  by  the  sacred 
animal  of  the  great  goddess,  the  ox,  and  conveyed  the  image 
of  the  goddess. 

There  is  no  need  to  follow  Dr.  Hahn  '  in  his  disquisition 
on  the  curious  wheeled  objects  of  the  Bronze  Age,  which 
were  probably  votive  offerings,  or  at  all  events  were  re- 
ligious symbols.  His  idea  is  that  the  small  objects  were 
symbols  of  the  large  real  waggon  in  which  rode  the  god  or 
goddess,  or  the  image  of  the  deity. 

Most  students  of  ceremonial  institutions  will  probably 
demur  to  Hahn's  position.  In  the  first  place,  there  is  no 
reason  to  believe  that  agriculture  was  discovered  only  in 
some  area  of  Eurasia,  and  that  the  art  thence  spread  over 
the  greater  part  of  the  habitable  world.  Then  the  evolu- 
tion of  spindle-whorls  into  cart-wheels  scarcely  appears 
probable.  It  seems  more  in  consonance  with  what  we 
know  of  the  history  of  sacred  institutions  and  implements, 

1  E.  Hahn,  Demeter  unci  Baubo,  Versuch  einer  Theorie  der  Entstehungun seres 
Ackerbaus,  1896,  Lttbeck. 


THE   EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART  137 

that  the  waggon  had  an  industrial  origin,  and  it  may  well 
be  that  it  arose  in  close  connection  with  agriculture;  the 
operations  of  agriculture  have  always  been  closely  connected 
with  religion,  and  there  is  no  reason  to  deny  that  the  agri- 
cultural cart  at  its  inception  may  have  been  associated  with 
the  cult  of  agriculture.  The  small  size  of  the  votive  offer- 
ings or  wheeled  symbols  is  no  matter  for  surprise.  On  the 
whole,  then,  we  may  accept  the  older  view  of  the  origin  of 
wheels  as  being  the  more  probable  alternative. 

Dr.  Hahn  points  out  that  he  is  dealing  solely  with  the 
four-wheeled  ox-waggon  which  was  used  for  religious  pur- 
poses. Later,  two-wheeled  horse-chariots  were  invented, 
and  were  used  from  India  to  Britain  and  North  Africa.  He 
adduces  the  authority  of  old  Johann  Scheffer,  who  published 
a  book  entitled  De  re  veliiculari,  in  1671,  for  the  opinion 
that,  contrary  to  what  one  would  expect,  the  four-wheeled 
ox-waggon  was  the  first  vehicle ;  then  the  taming  of  horses 
led  to  the  two-wheeled  chariots  or  carts,  and  finally  the 
horses  were  ridden. 

The  earliest  history  of  the  cart  will  perhaps  always  remain 
in  obscurity;  it  is  indeed  probable  that  it  arose  independ- 
ently in  more  than  one  area.  The  ancestral  slide-car  may 
have  been  one  source,  and  it  is  by  no  means  unlikely  that  a 
framework  on  rollers,  which  was  used  for  moving  large 
masses  of  stone,  or  even  the  common  sledge,  may  also  have 
given  rise  to  a  four-wheeled  waggon. 

We  must  now  return  from  this  long  digression  to  a  con- 
sideration of  certain  wheeled  vehicles  that  are  still  in  use, 
or,  till  recently,  were  employed  in  the  British  Islands.  The 
wheels,  however,  are  of  small  diameter,  and  are  solid  instead 
of  having  spokes. 

In  Captain  Burt's  famous  Letters,1  we  find  illustrations  of 

1  Burt,  Letters  from  a  Gentleman  in  the  North  of  Scotland  to  his  Friend  in 
London,  1754. 


I38  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

two  kinds  of  block-wheel  cart  that  were  in  use  in  Inverness 
about  1730.  Both  of  them  are  simple  modifications  of  the 
slide-car,  which,  as  we  have  already  seen,  was  in  contempo- 
rary use  with  them,  with  the  addition  of  wheels.  Concern- 
ing the  latter  we  read  : 

"  THE  Wheels,  when  new,  are  about  a  Foot  and  half  high, 
but  are  soon  worn  very  small:  They  are  made  of  three  pieces  of 
Plank,  pinned  together  at  the  Edges  like  the  Head  of  a  Butter 
Firken,  and  the  Axletree  goes  round  with  the  Wheel,  which  having 
some  Part  of  the  Circumference  with  the  Grain,  and  other  Parts 
not,  it  wears  unequally,  and  in  a  little  Time  is  rather  angular 
than  round,  which  causes  a  disagreeable  Noise,  as  it  moves  upon 
the  Stones." 

One  of  these  carts  appears  to  be  nothing  more  than  a 
wheeled  slide-car,  if  the  term  be  allowed,  in  which  a  round 
wicker  basket  is  jammed  between  the  shafts  just  behind  the 
pony. 

The  other  consists  of  an  open  framework,  the  base  of 
which  is  formed  by  the  two  shafts ;  and,  as  a  consequence, 
the  basket-like  body  of  the  cart  is  tilted  up  at  the  same 
angle  as  the  latter.  This  is  "  that  species  wherein  they 
carry  their  Peats."  ' 

A  very  similar  cart  to  the  last  is  engraved  on  the  map 
illustrating  Twiss's  A  Tour  in  Ireland  in  ijj$  ;  but  in  this 
there  is  no  front  to  the  cart,  and  the  side  rails  decrease  in 
size  from  behind  forwards,  and  cease  by  the  flanks  of  the 
horse,  so  that  when  the  cart  is  being  drawn  the  tops  of  the 
rails  are  approximately  horizontal.  An  illustration  (Fig. 
25)  of  the  same  cart  is  given  by  Croker.2 

1  These  are  called  kellachies  ;  for  another  account  of  these  and  other  primitive 
carts,  see  G.  L.  Gomme,  The  Village  Community,  i8go,  pp.  278,  286.  Isaac 
Taylor,   The  Origin  of  the  Aryans,  1890,  p.  179,  may  also  be  consulted. 

2  T.  Crofton  Croker,  Researches  in  the  South  of  Ireland:  1824. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE    CART 


1 39 


In  an  engraving  by  James  Malton,  published  in  1791,  of 
the  College  Green,  Dublin,1  we  find  an  illustration  of  a  cart 
which  consists  of  two  shafts  which  rest  on  pivots  jutting  out 


Fig.  24. 
Two  Block- Wheel  Carts,   Inverness  (1754);  after  Burt. 

from  the  centre  of  two  solid  wooden  wheels,  which  are 
connected  by  a  thick  quadrangular  axle-tree.  In  this  cart 
the  wheels  and  the  axle  are  solidly  joined  together,  and 
revolve  as  one  piece.  The  only  difference  between  the 
wheels  of  this  cart  and  those  of  our  second  "  missing  link," 
as  it  may  be  termed,  is  that  in  the  latter  they  are  made  out 
of  a  single  tree-trunk,  as  in  the  Portuguese  cart,  whereas  in 
the  former  they  are  built  up  of  several  pieces  of  wood. 
Owing  to  the  small  size  of  the  wheels  the  shafts  are  inclined 
at  a  great  angle,  and  in  order  to  get  it  level,  the  platform  of 

1  Malton  and  Cowen,  A  Picturesque  and  Descriptive  View  of  the  City  of 
Dublin  in  ijgz. 


140 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


the  cart  has  to  be  propped  up  behind  by  a  couple  of  stakes ; 
or,  to  put  it  in  other  words,  boards  are  laid  across  the  side 
rails  of  such  a  cart  as  that  figured  in  the  Tour  in  Ireland. 

There  are  contemporary  engravings  of  other  carts  pub- 
lished towards  the  end  of  last  century,  which  represent  very 
similar  carts — in  counties  Dublin  and  Wicklow,  for  example 
—  but  in  which  the  wheels  are  outside  of  the  shafts;  as  no 
linch-pin  is  drawn  we  must  assume  that  in  these  too  the  axle 
revolved  along  with  the  wheels. 

These  carts  are  described  in  the  following  manner  by 
Twiss  in  his  anonymously  published  book,  A  Tour  in  Ire- 
land in  1JJ5  : 


Fig.  25. 
Irish  Low-Back  Car  (1824) ;  after  Croker. 


"  Goods  are  conveyed  about  the  city  on  small  two-wheeled 
cars,  drawn  by  a  single  horse;  the  wheels  are  thin  round  blocks, 
each  about  twenty  inches  in  diameter.  The  wheels  of  those  cars 
which  are  used  in  the  country  are  placed  at  a  greater  distance 
from  each  other  than  those  of  city  cars." 

Quite  similar  cars  may  still  be  seen  in  use  in  the  north  of 


Plate  IV. 


Fig.  i.     Block-Wheel  Car,  Glenshesk  ;  from  a  photograph  by  Welch. 


* "  fF  >     I M  L3^H^3um^^If        ^^^l^BBI 

Fig.  2.     Block-Wheel  Car,  Carrickfergus  ;  from  a  photograph  by  Welch. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART  1 41 

Ireland,  from  County  Donegal  to  County  Down.  The 
wheels  may  be  within  the  shafts  and  with  a  revolving  axle; 
now,  however,  the  latter  is  usually  quite  slender;  or  the 
wheels  may  be  outside  the  shafts  and  with  a  linch-pin,  show- 
ing that  the  axle  is  fixed  and  that  the  wheels  alone  revolve. 
Planks  may  be  movably  attached  to  the  edges  of  the  plat- 
form, or  the  sides  may  be  permanently  fastened,  and  so  a 
cart,  as  opposed  to  what  is  more  correctly  termed  a  float  or 
a  lorry,  is  evolved. 

The  North  Irish  peasant  farmer,  when  he  wishes  to  crush 
the  clods  of  earth  on  his  dry  fields,  will  lift  the  cart  with 
its  shafts  off  the  wheels,  and  replace  them  on  a  wooden  roll- 
er, resembling  the  sketch  on  page  135,  and  to  increase  its 
effectiveness  he  puts  stones  into  the  cart.  The  cart,  save 
for  its  platform,  thus  reverts  to  the  stage  of  the  first 
"  missing  link." 

"  In  Borrowdale  it  is  on  record  that  wheeled  vehicles  did  not 
make  their  appearance  till  about  1770;  and  when  these  novelties 
did  reach  the  lakes,  they  were  clumsy  and  awkward  in  character. 
Clog-wheels  were  the  first  type  used  on  farm  carts,  and  there  are 
still  old  men  of  between  eighty  and  ninety  years,  who  can  re- 
member them  in  use.  The  wheels  are  clumsy  discs  of  wood, 
joined  by  a  great  beam  or  axle,  which  is  firmly  fastened  to  them. 
The  wheels  are  1  ft.  10^  ins.  in  diameter,  and  3  ins.  wide  in 
the  tyre,  where  the  iron  bands  or  '  strakes  '  are  formed  by  three 
pieces  nailed  to  the  wood.  The  distance  between  the  wheels  is 
3  ft.  2  ins."  ' 

But  the  cart  is,  so  to  speak,  only  half  fledged ;  it  moves 
along  slowly  and  heavily  on  its  small,  solid  wheels. 

The  evolution  of  the  spoke-wheel  was  probably  a  slow 
affair,  and  its  stages  are  missing  from  Ireland,  so  we  must 
turn  elsewhere  for  evidence. 

1  H.  Swainson  Cowper,  "Some  Old-Fashioned  Contrivances  in  Lakeland," 
The  Reliquary  and  Illustrated  Archaeologist,  iv.,  1898,  p.  20. 


142  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

The  employment  of  spoke-wheels  is,  however,  of  great 
antiquity.      Messrs.  Perrot  and  Chipiez  note  that : 

"  Not  one  of  the  Assyrian  military  pictures  can  be  named  in 
which  war  chariots  do  not  appear,  and  they  are  by  no  means  the 
heavy  and  clumsy  cars  now  used  in  some  parts  both  of  European 
and  Asiatic  Turkey.  Their  wheels  are  far  from  being  those  solid 
discs  of  timber  that  are  alone  capable  of  resisting  the  inequali- 
ties of  a  roadless  country.  They  have  not  the  lightness  of  a 
modern  carriage,  with  its  tires  of  beaten  steel,  but  the  felloes  of 
their  wheels  are  light  and  graceful  enough  to  prove  that  the  roads 
of  those  times  were  better  than  anything  the  Mesopotamia  of  to- 
day can  show.  The  spokes,  which  seem  to  have  been  fitted  with 
great  care  and  nicety,  are,  as  a  rule,  eight  in  number. ' '  1 

The  chariot  probably  came  into  Egypt  with  the  horse 
about  the  time  of  the  Oriental  pastoral  kings  (2098-1587 
B.C.),  and  it  came  as  a  fully  developed  vehicle. 

In  the  early  Cyprian  tombs  clay  models  of  chariots  have 
been  found  ;  these  are  modelled  with  solid  wheels,  but  some- 
times spokes  are  painted  on  the  clay ;  other  models,  though 
decorated  with  structural  details,  are  almost  certainly  in- 
tended to  represent  vehicles  with  block-wheels.  On  the 
sarcophagi  and  on  some  vases  the  chariots  have  spokes. 
Messrs.  Perrot  and  Chipiez,2  while  admitting  that  all  war 
chariots  had  a  strong  family  likeness  to  each  other,  deny  that 
the  artist  borrowed  from  Assyrian  sources,  and  state  their 
belief  that  he  went  no  farther  than  his  native  city;  "  even 
the  wheel-spokes  are  different;  they  are  more  solid  and 
heavy  in  the  Cypriot  example,  the  wheelwright  who  made 
them  has  less  skill  than  his  Mesopotamian  rival." 

To  come  nearer  home,  a  beautiful  bronze  bucket  was  dis- 

1  G.  Perrot  and  C.  Chipiez,  A  History  of  Art  in  Chaldea  and  Assyria,  ii., 
p.  75- 

2  A  History  of  Art  in  Phoenicia  and  Cyfirus,  i.,  p.  209;  ii.,  pp.  181,  310, 
et  sea. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART 


43 


covered  in  1891  on  the  banks  of  the  Danube,1  about  thirty- 
seven  miles  to  the  east  of  Vienna.  It  belonged  to  the 
period  of  transition  between  those  of  Hallstadt  and  La 
Tene,  that  is  to  say,  about  the  commencement  of  the  fourth 
century  B.C.,  or  at  the  time  when  iron  was  replacing  bronze 
for  cutting  implements  in  that  part  of  Europe.  Amongst 
other  subjects  a  chariot  race  is  engraved  on  this  bucket,  or 
situla.  The  wheels  of  the  chariots  are  either  block-wheels  with 
four  nearly  circular  perforations,  or  spoke-wheels  with  four 
very  broad  spokes ;  this  was  evidently  the  character  of  the 


Fig.  26. 
Celtic  Chariot,  from  the  Gottweiger  Situla  ;  after  Szombathy. 

wheels  of  the  war  chariots  of  the  Celts ;  we  may  assume  that 
those  of  their  waggons  were  of  yet  ruder  construction. 

The  Roman  evidence  has  been  conveniently  summarised 
by  J.  Yates  and  G.  E.  Marindin  in  their  article  on  the 
Plaustrum.*  The  body  consisted  of  a  platform,  with  or 
without  sides ;  these  were  upright  boards  or  open-work  rails, 
or  a  large  wicker  basket  was  fastened  on  the  platform.  The 
wheels  ordinarily  had  no  spokes,3  but  were  solid,  of  the  kind 
called  tympana,  or  "  drums,"  nearly  a  foot  in  thickness,  and 

1  J.  Szombathy,  "  Die  Gottweiger  Situla,"  Correspondenz-Blatt  Deutsch  An/A. 
Gesell,  xxiii.,  1892,  p.  9. 

2  A  Dictionary  of  Greek  and  Roman  Antiquities,  edited  by  W.  Smith, 
W.  Wayte,  and  G.  E.  Marindin,  1S91.  The  plaustrum  was  a  heavy  two- 
wheeled  cart ;  the  four-wheeled  was  the  plaustrum  majus. 

3  Non  sunt  radiatce,  Prob.  ad  Verg.  Georg.,  i.,  165. 


144  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

made  either  by  sawing  them  whole  from  the  trunk  of  a  tree 
or  by  nailing  together  boards.  These  wheels  were  fastened 
to  the  axle,  which  revolved  within  wooden  rings  attached  to 
the  under  side  of  the  platform.  Although  these  wheels  were 
excellent  for  the  preservation  of  the  roads,  they  turned  with 
a  long  circuit,  and  advanced  slowly  and  with  a  creaking 
sound.1  They  were  usually  drawn  by  oxen,  but  sometimes 
by  mules.  The  Greek  ocjxa^a  corresponded  both  to  the 
plaustrum  and  the  plaustrmn  majus ;  "  the  four-wheeled 
wain  "  is  mentioned  in  the  Odyssey,  ix.,  241,  and  Herodotus, 
i.,  188. 

Professor  Tylor  figures  an  ox-waggon  that  is  carved  on 
the  Antonine  Column ;  it  appears  to  have  solid  wheels, 
and  the  square  end  of  the  axle  proves  that  it  and  its 
drum-wheels  turned  round  together.  He  points  out  that 
the  ancient  Roman  farm-carts  were  mostly  made  with 
wheels  built  up  of  several  pieces  of  wood  nailed  together, 
4<  as  are  their  successors  which  are  used  to  this  day  with 
wonderfully  little  change,  as  in  Greece  and  Portugal."  The 
bullock-cart  of  the  Azores  '  is  a  striking  relic  from  the  classic 
world  ;  "its  wheels  are  studded  with  huge  iron  nails  by  way 
of  tire."  3     Although  the  block-wheel  was  still  in  use  in  the 

Fig.  27. 
Agricultural  Scene  on  a  Vase  in  the  Campana  Collection,  Louvre  ;  after  Duruy. 

Italy  of  the  Roman  Empire,  spoke-wheels  were  also  em- 
ployed even  for  agricultural  vehicles,  but  I  have  been  unable 
to  gather  any  Italian  evidence  of  the  transition  stages. 

1  Stridentia  plan  sir  a,  Verg.  Georg.,  iii.,  536. 

2  Bullar,   Winter  in  the  Azores,  i.,  p.  121  ;  cf.  Tylor,  loc.  cit.,  fig.  12,  p.  80. 

3  E.  B.  Tylor,  "  On  the  Origin  of  the  Plough  and  Wheel-Carriage,"  Journ. 
Anth.  Inst.,  x.,  1880,  p.  80. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF   THE   CART 


145 


My  friend,  Mr.  J.  L.  Myers,  of  Christchurch,  Oxford, 
has  very  kindly  given  me  several  references  to  early  Greek 
chariot  wheels  which  have  supplied  links  in  the  evolution  of 
spokes  that  I  was  in  search  of.  The  block-wheel  is  shown 
in  A,  Fig.  30.  This  is  evidently  a  built-up  wheel,  but  there 
is  no  rim  or  felloe  to  it. 

Wheels  with  three  spokes,  evidently  derived  from  this, 
are  figured  by  Duruy  from  various  sources.1  The  spirited 
little  agricultural  scene  (Fig.  27),  depicted  on  a  vase  in  the 
Campana  collection  in  the  Louvre,  gives  a  clue  to  the  struc- 
ture of  the  wheel,  which  is  seen  on  a  larger  scale  on  another 
vase  (Fig.  28),  copied  by  Duruy  from  Gerhard.2     The  wheel 


Fig.  2S. 
Ancient  Greek  Carriage  on  a  Vase  ;  after  Duruy,  from  Gerhard. 

(B,  Fig.  30)  figured  by  Harrison  and  Verrall s  from  an 
archaic  Greek  plate  in  the  British  Museum  of  the  sixth 
century  B.C.,  which  also  consists  of  three  spokes,  is  another 
example  of  the  same  type  of  wheel.     A  variety  with  two 

1  V.  Duruy,  Histoire  des  Grecs,  1887,  i.,  pp.  251,  373.  732. 

2  Auserlesene  Vasenbilder,  Taf.  ccxvii. 

3  Jane  Harrison  and  Margaret  Verrall,  Mythology  and  Monuments  of  Ancient 
Athens,  1890,  p.  289,  fig.  30. 


146 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


of  the  spokes  slightly  curved  is  admirably  rendered  on  an 
Etruscan  silver  coin  in  the  British  Museum  '  (C,  Fig.  30), 
the  date  of  which  may  be  about  the  middle  of  the  fifth 
century,  or  earlier.  A  wheel  of  this  description  was  found 
by  Gastaldi 3  in  the  turbary  of  Mercurago,  near  Arona  in 
North  Italy;  "  it  is  a  wheel  of  elegant  form,  in  which  there 
is  not  the  slightest  trace  of  any  metal."  The  figure  given 
by  Gastaldi  (on  page  112  of  his  book)  proves  that  these 
wheels  could  be  made  most  skilfully  in  the  Bronze  Age. 

The  four-spoked  wheel  is  characteristic  of  Greek  vehicles, 
and  may  be  seen  on  innumerable  coins  and  vases.  It  was  in 
use  in  the  Mykenaean  Period.     A  war-chariot  of  the  heroic 


Fig.  29. 
Mykenaean  War  Chariot  of  the  Heroic  Age  on  the  Francois  Vase  ;  after  Duruy. 

age  is  painted  upon  the  Francois  vase  (Fig.  29) 3  with  this 
kind  of  wheel;  in  order  to  give  greater  support  to  the  felloe, 
the  spokes  either  splay  out  or  are  clamped  by  triangular 

1  B.  V.  Head,  A  Guide  to  the  Principal  Gold  and  Silver  Coins  of  the  Ancients, 
from  circ.  B.C.  700/0  A.D.  I,  British  Museum,  3rd  ed.,  1889,  pi.  xv.,  fig.  1. 

2  B.  Gastaldi,  Lake  Habitations  and  Pre- historic  Remains  in  the   Turbaries 
and  Marl-Beds  of  Northern  and  Central  Italy,  London,  1865. 

3  From  Duruy,  loc.  cit.,  p.  155,  after  Monum.  delV  Instit.  archeol.  IV.  tav.  liv., 
lv.  ;  and  W.  Helbig,  Das  homerische  Epos  aus  den  Denkm.  erldut.,  fig.  18,  p. 
101. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART 


H7 


blocks.  An  interesting  feature  in  this  wheel  is  the  indica- 
tion of  lashing  at  the  junction  of  the  spokes  with  the  hub; 
it  looks  as  if  these  were  fastened  together  by  means  of 
leather  thongs.  It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  in  this  in- 
stance actual  lashing  is  intended,  or  whether  the  wheels 
were  decorated  with  a  pattern  which  had  its  origin  in  an 
antecedent  method  of  fastening;  examples  of  the  latter  will 
be  found  in  my  little  book,  Evolution  in  Art.  A  method 
of  supporting  and  strengthening  the  rim,  analogous  to  the 
last  device,  is  found  on  an  Euboian  coin  of  the  early  part  of 
the  sixth  century  B.C.,  '  but  in  this  case  (D,  Fig.  30)  small 
struts  are  employed. 


0^ ^  E 

Fig.  30. 
A  Series  of  Early  Greek  Chariot  Wheels  from  Various  Sources. 

The  shape  of  the  spokes  of  Greek  wheels  and  the  method 
of  their  insertion  into  their  respective  felloes  vary  consider- 
ably;  in  E,  Fig.  30,  will  be  found  four  variants;  of  these 
No.  1  is  from  a  coin  of  Tarentum  a ;  No.  2  is  from  a  car  of 
Triptolemus,  on  a  vase,  in  which  again  there  is  a  chevron 
ornament  on  the  spokes  at  their  insertion  in  the  hub  which 
is  suggestive  of  tying.3     Nos.  3  and  4  are  common  forms, 

1  Brit.  Mus.  Guide,  pi.  5,  fig.  21. 
*I6iJ.,  pi.  7,  fig-  5- 

3Duruy,  loc.  cit.,  i.,  p.  53  ;  see  also  Harrison  and  Verrall,  loc.  cit.,  p.  cix., 
fig.  22  ;  p.  cxxxix.,  fig.  36. 


I48  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

especially  the  latter.  An  odd  variant '  (F,  Fig.  30)  may 
represent  a  twinned  four-spoked  wheel;  it  occurs  on  a 
tetradrachm  of  Syracuse  of  about  500  B.C. 

Mr.  Myres  informs  me  that  Mykenaean  and  Dipylon  cars 
regularly  have  plain  four-spoked  wheels 2 ;  and  this  is  normal 
till  Roman  times.  Six  spokes  occur  in  the  seventh  to  the 
sixth  centuries,  however,3  and  later,  as  on  a  coin  of  Chalkis4 
of  the  third  to  the  second  century  B.C.  ;  but  most  of  the 
apparently  six-spoked  wheels  are  perspective  views  of  four- 
spoked  wheels,  in  which  the  axle  is  shown,  and  also  the 
projecting  hub.  Eight  spokes  occur  as  early  as  the  seventh 
century  (probably),  in  an  Oriental  car  on  a  Cyprian  vase,6 
and  in  the  sixth  century  at  Klazomenae,  on  a  painted  sar- 
cophagus.8 But  they  are  not  common  till  much  later,  as, 
for  example,  on  an  Athenian  coin  7  of  the  third  to  the 
second  century  B.C. 

After  I  had  written  the  foregoing  I  came  across  a  most  in- 
teresting paper,  by  Professor  de  Aranzadi,  on  "  The  Groan- 
ing and  other  Waggons  of  Spain,"  8  which  supplies  very 
valuable  evidence  as  to  the  real  nature  of  these  early  wheels. 
The  built-up  solid  wheel  of  ancient  Greece  (Fig.  30,  A)  finds 
its  exact  counterpart  among  the  Basques  of  to-day  (Fig.  31). 
The  planks  of  which  the  wheel  is  made  are  kept  together  by 
a  transverse  plano-convex  bar,  on  the  inner  side,  and  by  two 
annular  iron  bands,  which  are  fastened  at  the  periphery,  on 

1  Brit.  A/us.  Guide,  pi.  9,  fig.  34. 
2 E.g.,  Brunn,  Gr.  Kunst-geschichte,  i.,  figs.  97,  100. 

zE.g.,  on  a  Melian  vase,  Conze,  Melische  Thongefasse,  and  Brunn,  Gr. 
Kunst-geschichte,  i.,  p.  109. 

4  Brit.  Mus.  Guide,  p.  43,  fig.  32. 

5  Brunn,  Gr.  Kunst-geschichte,  i.,  fig.  96. 
6 Ibid.,  loc.  cit.,  fig.  135. 

1  Brit.  Mus.  Guide,  pi.  65,  fig.  14. 

8  Telesforo  de  Aranzadi,  "  Der  achzende  Wagen  und  Andres  aus  Spanien," 
Archiv.  fiir  Anthropologic,  xxiv.,  1896,  p.  215. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART 


I49 


the  inside  and  outside  of  the  wheel ;  but  a  still  simpler  kind 
of  wheel  (Fig.  31,6)  also  occurs.  The  intermediate  stage 
(Fig.  30,  C)  is  still  in  use  in  Spain ;  Aranzadi  calls  it  the 
Cantabrian-Asturian  wheel.  In  this  the  felloe  is  formed  of 
six  pieces  of  wood,  two  of  the  primary  planks  remain,  and 
the  cross-bar  is  now  biconvex  in  section.  The  two  peripheral 
iron  bands  are  also  present.  In  one  form  from  Cangas  de 
Tineo,  the  two  planks  fill  up  the  angles  which  the  cross-bar 
makes  with  the  felloe,  and  the  cross-bar  forms  the  only- 
spoke. 


qgFF 


^ 


Fig.  31. 

Various  Spanish  Wheels  ;  after  Telesforo  de  Aranzadi. 

1.  The  outer  side  of  a  Basque  wheel.  2.  The  inner  side  of  the  same  wheel.  3.  The 
Cantabrian-Asturian  wheel.  4.  Portuguese  wheel.  5.  Portuguese  cart.  G.  Wheel 
from  Larrasoana. 


In  Portugal,  wheels  are  made  out  of  a  single  piece  of  wood 
(Fig.  31,  4),  in  which  two  elliptical  holes  are  cut;  the  wheel 
is  strengthened  by  bands  of  iron.  An  analogous  wheel, 
built  up  of  three  boards,  occurs  in  Galicia.  The  latter  type 
is  found  in  the  ox-carts  of  the  Canary  Islands  and  among 
the  Zufti   Indians  of  New  Mexico,  to  which  places  it  was 


150  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

brought  by  the  Spaniards.  I  have  been  informed  that  in 
Mexico,  where  this  kind  of  wheel  is  also  found,  it  is  some- 
times made  without  any  metal  parts.  A  perfectly  similar 
wheel  is  figured  by  Gastaldi ' ;  it  was  made  of  three  pieces 
of  walnut  wood ;  these  were  clamped  by  two  curved  pieces 
of  larch  wood,  which  were  let  into  the  wheel ;  the  latter  had 
two  semi-circular  perforations  on  each  side  of  the  axle.  The 
wheel  belonged  to  the  Bronze  Age  of  Northern  Italy,  and 
was  found  in  a  bog  at  Mercurago,  near  Arona. 

It  is  tempting  to  regard  such  perforated  block-wheels  as 
representing  the  precursors  of  spoke-wheels.  If  in  a  solid 
wheel,  with  four  perforations,  it  was  found  that  the  holes 
could  be  enlarged  without  seriously  weakening  the  contriv- 
ance, a  wheel  with  four  broad  spokes  would  result ;  and  it 
might  be  discovered  that  it  was  better  to  make  spokes  in- 
tentionally than  to  leave  them  as  supports  between  holes. 

I  do  not,  however,  think  that  this  was  the  actual  process 
of  evolution.  Most  probably  the  wheel  was  composed 
originally  of  a  single  piece  of  wood,  later  it  may  have  been 
constructed  of  boards  (Fig.  31,  6)  which  were  variously 
strengthened.  Yet  later  it  was  discovered  that  it  was  not 
necessary  to  make  the  wheel  solid,  and  various  expedients, 
some  of  which  have  been  noted  above,  were  devised  to 
lighten  the  wheel  and  yet  retain  its  strength. 

Groaning  through  Spain,  as  if  still  in  the  pangs  of  their 
labour,  do  we  find  these  various  forms  of  cumbersome 
wheels,  essentially  the  same  as  they  creaked  three  millen- 
niums ago  in  ancient  Greece.2 

The  "groaning  cart,"  or,  as  the  Spaniards  poetically 
term  it,  the  "  singing  cart,"  Carro  que  canta,  may  still  be 
heard  in  the  picturesque  parts  of  Cantabrian  and  Atlantic 

1  B.  Gastaldi,  loc.  cit.,  p.  ill. 

2  Block-wheels,  which  may  be  mere  discs  of  wood,  sometimes  perforated  with 
holes,  occur  in  China,  Korea,  and  other  parts  of  Asia. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART  151 

coasts;  but  it  is  probably  doomed  to  disappear,  as  carts  of 
the  same  shape,  but  with  an  iron  hub  in  the  wheels,  with 
felloes,  with  the  axle  fastened  to  the  floor  of  the  vehicle, 
and  which  do  not  squeak,  are  silently  but  surely  replacing 
them.  The  friction  of  the  axle  against  the  wedges  in  the 
floor  of  the  waggon  which  keep  it  in  its  place,  produces  the 
squeaking  or  jarring  sound  which  from  time  to  time  sounds 
like  a  tune  or  its  octave ;  this  is  useful  as  a  warning  to  pre- 
vent two  carts  from  meeting  in  a  narrow  street,  and  also 
serves  for  the  recognition  of  an  approaching  waggon.  In 
the  towns  the  creaking  of  carts  is  forbidden,  so  the  drivers 
grease  the  axles  with  tallow,  soap,  or  bacon,  but  as  soon  as 
they  have  passed  the  last  house  of  the  town  they  remove 
the  tallow  and  put  resin  and  water  on  the  axle  to  make  it 
groan  again,  so  great  is  the  pleasure  they  take  in  it.  In  Ga- 
licia  there  is  a  folk-song,  which  runs  as  follows: 

"  When  thou  wilt  that  the  waggon  sings, 
Moisten  the  axle  in  the  river, 
For,  if  thoroughly  wetted, 
It  sings  like  a  pipe." 

When  these  carts  are  driven  on  natural  roads,  which  have 
been  made  by  repeated  use,  even  the  steepest  hills  are  not 
avoided.  They  are  used  for  all  kinds  of  field  work,  for 
carrying  manure,  or  bringing  in  the  harvest,  and  also  they 
are  very  important  at  weddings  for  carrying  the  bride's 
dowry  to  the  house  of  the  bridegroom. 

Professor  de  Aranzadi  gives  various  details  which  are  im- 
portant for  those  who  would  go  into  further  details  of  the 
construction  of  primitive  carts.  Dr.  Gadow '  devotes  a 
chapter  to  "  Ox-carts  and  different  modes  of  yoking"  in 
his  book  on  Spain ;  he  gives  five  excellent  figures  of  carts, 

1  Hans  Gadow,  In  Northern  Spain,  London,  1897,  pp.  272-280. 


152  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

and  graphically  describes  "  the  most  awful  squeaking, 
squealing,  creaking,  croaking,  howling  noise."  He  states, 
the  natives  "  either  say  that  the  oxen  like  the  music,  or 
that  the  noise  drives  away  the  devil." 

We  have  already  seen  that  in  yet  earlier  times  than  those 
of  Rome  and  Greece  the  spoke-wheeled  war-chariots  bore  the 
Assyrian  warriors  on  their  paths  of  conquest,  so  soon  did 
the  early  and  rapidly  perfected  wheel  of  the  war-chariot  out- 
strip the  backward  wheel  of  the  "  slow  lumbering  wains  of 
the  Eleusinian  mother."  ' 

As  Professor  Tylor  truly  observes : 

"  In  looking  at  these  clumsy  vehicles  we  certainly  seem  to  have 
primitive  forms  before  us.  There  is,  however,  the  counter- 
argument which  ought  not  to  be  overlooked,  and  which  in  some 
measure  accounts  for  the  lasting-on  of  these  rude  carts,  namely, 
that  for  heavy  carting  across  rough  ground  they  are  convenient  as 
well  as  cheap  and  easily  repaired.  Considering  that  the  railway- 
carriage  builder  gives  up  the  coach-wheel  principle  and  returns 
to  the  primitive  construction  of  the  pair  of  wheels  fixed  to  the 
axle  turning  in  bearings,  we  see  that  our  ordinary  carriage-wheels 
turning  independently  on  their  axles,  are  best  suited  to  com- 
paratively narrow  wheels  and  to  smooth  ground  or  made  roads. 
Here  they  give  greater  lightness  and  speed,  and  especially  have 
the  advantage  of  easily  changing  direction  and  turning,  which  in 
the  old  block-wheel  cart  can  only  be  done  by  gradually  slewing 
round  in  a  wide  circuit." 

We  must  now  return  to  Ireland. 

It  is  impossible  to  say  how  long  ago  spoke-wheels  were 
introduced  there;  we  may,  however,  feel  pretty  certain  that 
it  was  during  the  Bronze  Age,  and  we  may  also  assume  that 
they  probably  accompanied  the  war-chariot. 

We  know  that  three  great  branches  of  the  Celtic  stock, 
the  Gauls,  the  British,  and  the  Irish,  used  war-chariots. 

1  Vergil,  Georgics,  i.,  163. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART  1 53 

With  regard  to  the  first  two,  we  have  (as  O'Beirne  Crowe  ' 
points  out)  authentic  evidence  of  the  fact  in  contemporary 
Roman  writers,  and  as  to  the  latter,  the  ever-faithful  and 
very  ancient  Irish  documents  are  equally  clear  on  this  point. 

In  the  feast  of  Bricriu,  Loegaire  Buadach's  horses  and 
chariot  are  thus  described  by  Find-abair  (Bright-beam) 2  to 
her  mother,  Medb,  queen  of  the  Connachta: 

11  I  see,  indeed,"  says  Find-abair,  "  the  two  horses  which  are 
under  the  chariot — two  horses  ardent,  speckled  grey:  of  like 
colour,  of  like  form,  of  like  goodness,  of  like  victory.  .  .  . 
A  wood-band,  withe-y  chariot.  Two  black,  adjusted  wheels: 
two  beautiful  entwining  reins:  steel,  sword-straight  shafts:  a 
splendid  body  of  strong  joinings.     A  ridgy,  strong-bright  yoke." 

The  same  lady  describes  Conall  Cernach's  chariot  thus: 

"  A  wood-band,  withe-y  chariot.  Two  bright,  brazen  wheels: 
a  bright  pole  of  much-silver:  a  very  high,  noisy  body.  A  ridgy, 
strong-proud  yoke:  two  wreath-y,  strong-yellow  reins." 

Again,  after  describing  the  horses,  as  before,  Find-abair 
describes  the  chariot  of  the  hero  Cu  Chulaind  thus: 

"  A  withe-band  chariot  of  witheing.  Two  very  yellow,  iron 
wheels:  a  pole  with  a  witheing  of  findruine.  A  tin  body  of  slope- 
joinings.  A  ridgy,  strong-golden  yoke:  two  wreath-y,  strong- 
yellow  reins." 

From  these  and  other  descriptions  it  is  evident  that  the 
body  (cret,  our  "  crate  ")  of  the  chariot  was  always  of  wood, 
that  is,  well-wrought  wicker-work  on  a  strong  timber  frame. 
In  our  third  quotation  the  body  is  said  to  be  made  of  tin; 
elsewhere  it  is  described  as  "  a  very  high,  noisy  body,  and 

1  J.  O'Beirne  Crowe,  "  Siabur-Charpat  Con  Culaind,"  Journ.  Roy.  Hist, 
and  Arch.  Assoc,  Ireland  {Kilkenny  Arch.  Soc),  vol.  i.  (4th  ser.),  1S70, 
p.  413.     "  The  Irish  Chariot." 

2  Sullivan  translates  this  name  "  Fair-browed  "  (loc.  cit.,  cccclxxxi). 


154  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

it  of  tin,  of  slope-joininglets."  Now,  decorating  chariots 
with  tin  was  a  favourite  practice  among  the  ancient  Celts. 
Thus  Pliny  {lib.  xxxiv.,  cap.  17)  says  that  the  Gauls  were  in 
the  habit  of  adorning  their  vehicles  with  tin.  Behind  the 
chariot  were,  according  to  O'Beirne  Crowe,  two  removable 
shafts,  for  in  the  Book  of  Leinster  we  read:  "  Let  the  shaft 
of  my  carriage  be  reached  me,  that  I  may  try  the  ford  be- 
fore the  horses."  In  front  was  the  pole,  most  probably  of 
wood,  and  overlaid  with  silver;  but  still  we  are  told  several 
times  it  was  made  of  silver,  one  version  being,  "  a  bright 
pole  of  bright-silver,  with  a  witheing  of  ftnd-ruine."  To 
this  a  single  yoke  for  the  two  horses  was  attached.  It  had 
two  wheels  only,  sometimes  all  of  iron  or  bronze;  when  of 
wood,  which  we  presume  to  have  been  the  case  where  the 
material  is  not  specified,  these  wheels  always  had  an  iron 
tire.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  Celtic  chariot- 
wheel  was  relatively  very  small. 

In  the  Sculptured  Stones  of  Scotland,  ii.  (1867),  p.  lvi. 
(Spalding  Club),  Stuart  makes  the  following  statement : 

"  Occasionally  fragments  of  chariots  have  been  found  in  British 
sepulchres.  About  1815,  a  barrow,  near  Market-Weighton,  in 
Yorkshire,  was  opened,  in  which  was  a  cist  containing  the  skele- 
ton of  a  man.  .  .  .  On  each  side  had  been  placed  a  chariot- 
wheel,  of  which  the  iron  tire  and  ornaments  of  the  nave  have 
alone  remained.  The  wheels  had  been  about  two  feet  eleven 
inches  in  diameter." 

In  a  neighbouring  tumulus  the  wheels  were  about  two 
feet  eight  inches  in  diameter. 

Dr.  Sullivan  says  1  the  wheels  were  made  of  bronze  or  of 
iron ;  the  former  was  the  older  material,  and  seems  to  have 
been    only    traditionally   remembered    when    the   principal 

1  W.  K.  Sullivan  and  E.  O'Curry,  On  the  Manners  and  Customs  of  the 
Ancient  Irish,  vol.  i.,  Introduction,  pp.  cccclxxv-cccclxxxiii. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART  I  55 

tales  took  their  present  form,  the  material  then  in  general 
use  being  iron.  The  chariot-wheel  was  not  a  mere  disc, 
but  had  spokes.  He  knew  of  only  one  passage  from  which 
the  number  of  spokes  can  be  inferred.  The  passage  in  ques- 
tion is  the  description  of  Cu  Chulaind's  chariot  in  the  very 
ancient  Irish  manuscript,  Siabur  Cliarpat  Conchulaind : 
"  The  Phantom  Chariot  of  Cuchulaind." 

"  A  stately  Brog  after  that  pair  [of  horses]; 
two  firm  black  wheels; 
two  symmetrical  five-spoked  wheels." 

The  chariots  (carpats)  in  the  foregoing  account  appear  to 
have  been  the  ordinary  war-chariots,  as  well  as  the  vehicles 
which  were  used  for  travelling.  Cu  Chulaind  and  other 
warriors  had,  however,  as  Sullivan  points  out,  a  special  war- 
chariot,  the  CatJi  Carpat  serda,  or  scythed  battle-chariot. 
O'Beirne  Crowe  translates  it  the  serrated  war-chariot,  "  be- 
cause when  fully  furnished,  every  part  of  it  available  for 
attack  or  defence  being  closely  spiked,  presented  the  edge- 
appearance  of  a  saw  (Irish  serr,  Latin  serra)." 

These  warriors  of  the  heroic  age,  whether  of  Erin  or 
Greece  it  matters  not,  took  a  laudable  pride  in  their  war  ac- 
coutrements, and  not  least  in  the  decoration  of  their  chariots. 
These  descriptions  from  Irish  sagas  recall  to  mind  one  from 
the  great  Greek  saga : 

"  So  Hera,  the  goddess  queen,  daughter  of  great  Kronos,  went 
her  way  to  harness  the  gold-frontletted  steeds;  and  Hebe  quickly 
put  to  the  car  the  curved  wheels  of  bronze,  eight-spoked,  upon 
their  axle-tree  of  iron.  Golden  is  their  felloe,  imperishable,  and 
tires  of  bronze  are  fitted  thereover,  a  marvel  to  look  upon;  and 
the  naves  are  of  silver,  to  turn  about  on  either  side.  And  the 
car  is  plaited  tight  with  gold  and  silver  thongs,  and  two  rails  run 
round  about  it.     And  the  silver  pole  stood  out  therefrom;  upon 


156  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

the  end  bound  she  the  fair  golden  yoke,  and  set  thereon  the 
fair  breaststraps  of  gold,  and  Hera  led  beneath  the  yoke  the 
horses  fleet  of  foot,  and  hungered  for  strife  and  the  battle-cry." 
— Iliad,  v.  730. 

From  gods  and  demi-gods  we  must  descend  to  mortals, 
and  from  the  inspiring  times  when  the  world  was  young  we 
must  pass  to  the  fin-de-siecle. 

Mr.  Hamilton1  states  that  in  1823,  in  the  Brown  Hall 
estate,  in  Donegal, 

"  carts  they  had  none  ;  most  of  the  carrying  was  done  in  creels 
on  ponies'  backs.  Some  superior  farmers  had  what  were  called 
low-backed  cars — a  sort  of  platform  with  shafts,  and  under  it  a 
pair  of  solid  block-wheels.  One  rich  man  had  spoke-wheels, 
which  were  greatly  admired.  .  .  .  Crowds  came  to  see  the 
first  cart  that  was  turned  out ;  but  though  it  was  voted  '  illegant,' 
it  was  declared  useless.  '  For,'  said  a  sage  among  the  spectators, 
*  who  ever  heard  of  a  cart  in  this  country  ? '  And  his  argument 
seemed  to  weigh  much  with  his  auditors.  However,  in  a  few 
years  later  the  Scotchmen  had  at  one  time  orders  on  hand  for 
fifty  carts." 

Spoke-wheel  vehicles  jostled  block-wheel  cars  a  century 
ago  in  Dublin,  as  they  still  do  in  parts  of  Ulster.  The 
country  carts  with  solid  wheels  are  laggards  from  the  early 
Bronze  Age  —  possibly  from  Neolithic  times;  the  spoke- 
wheel  carts  are  perhaps  the  modified  descendants  of  the 
war-chariot  which  the  Gaelic-speaking  Celts  introduced  into 
the  British  Islands.  We  have  here,  in  the  evolution  of  the 
wheel,  another  example  of  the  stimulus  to  invention  and  im- 
provement that  war  gives  to  technology,  which  improve- 
ments may  be  later  introduced  into  the  peaceful  avocations 
of  life. 

Further  investigations  must  decide  whether  the  excentric 

1  J.  Hamilton,  Sixty  Years'  Experience  as  an  Irish  Landlord,  1894,  p.  47. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE   CART 


157 


spokes  of  the  modern  Basque  and  ancient  Greek  wheels  were 
characteristic  of  the  vehicles  of  the  agricultural  Mediter- 
ranean race,  and  whether  the  radiating  spoke-wheels  were 
invented,  or  introduced  into  Europe,  by  the  mobile  Aryan 
peoples. 


Fig.  32. 
Two  Carts  at  Dundonald,  County  Down  ;  from  Photographs. 

A  most  interesting  series  of  spoke-wheels  can  be  seen,  for 
example,  at  Dundonald,  near  Belfast,  in  County  Down. 
The  cart  itself  is  of  the  same  type  as  that  associated  with 
block- wheels ;  but  there  are  two  varieties  of  spoke-wheels. 
In  that  both  the  wheels  are  small — scarcely  larger  than  the 
solid  wheels ;  but  in  the  one  case  they  are  placed  within  the 
shafts,  and  in  the  other  case  outside  of  them.     Thus  we  get 


158  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

the  same  two  varieties  that  we  find  among  the  block-wheel 
cars.  It  is  obvious  that  in  the  first  variety  the  wheel  must 
be  kept  small,  otherwise  there  would  not  be  room  enough 
for  it  beneath  the  floor  of  the  cart ;  but  this  necessary  limit- 
ation does  not  obtain  for  the  second  variety.  Here  the 
conditioning  factor  appears  to  be  a  blind  adherence  to  tradi- 
tional methods,  for  the  people  are  accustomed  to  the  old 
style  of  cart,  with  its  familiar  small  wheels. 

We  have  seen  that  it  is  more  convenient  to  make  block- 
wheels  of  small  size,  and  this  necessitates  a  considerable 
slant  in  the  shafts,  which  has  to  be  rectified  by  propping  up 
the  hinder  part  of  the  floor  of  the  cart.  If  this  particular  * 
form  of  cart  is  persisted  in,  the  wheels  must  be  kept  small, 
even  when  they  are  outside  of  the  shafts,  or  else  they  would 
make  the  floor  of  the  cart  slope  downwards  in  front. 

I  have  a  photograph  of  another  cart  which  shows  two  in- 
teresting features:  first,  a  slight  reduction  in  the  upright 
back-staves ;  and  second,  the  shafts  proper  are  added  on  to 
the  lower  framework  of  the  cart,  and  are  placed  at  such  an 
angle  to  it  that  they  approximate  to  the  horizontal  position 
of  ordinary  shafts. 

From  this  last  it  is  but  a  small  step  so  to  increase  the 
diameter  of  the  wheel  that  the  shafts  can  lie  in  a  horizontal 
position,  and  thus  form  the  foundation  of  the  floor  of  the 
cart.     This  is  the  present  condition  of  the  ordinary  cart. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  ORIGIN  OF  THE  IRISH  JAUNTING-CAR 

IN  the  last  chapter  we  studied  a  series  of  primitive  vehicles 
which  are  either  in  use  at  the  present  day  in  Ireland,  or 
which,  comparatively  recently,  were  employed  in  various 
parts  of  the  British  Islands.  We  have  now  to  investigate 
the  origin  of  a  conveyance  which  is  absolutely  confined  to 
Ireland,  a  true  insular  variety  of  carriage. 

There  is  very  good  evidence  that  the  jaunting-car  was 
evolved  at  the  end  of  the  last  century,  or  more  probably 
within  the  first  few  years  of  this  century.  It  is  therefore  by 
no  means  an  ancient  vehicle,  and,  unlike  many  other  im- 
plements, it  has  no  long  ancestry  of  progressive  improve- 
ments from  an  early  type,  but,  once  started,  it  rapidly  passed 
through  its  developmental  history. 

We  have  not  far  to  seek  for  the  parental  form;  in  fact, 
we  have  already  made  its  acquaintance  as  a  cart.  In  his 
Hibernia  Ciiriosa,  Mr.  Bush  '  gives  the  following  graphic 
account  of  the  various  uses  to  which  the  cart  was  put  in 
1764: 

"  But  the  drollest  and  most  diverting  kind  of  conveyance  for 
your  genteel  and  ungenteel  parties  of  pleasure  is  what  they  call 

1  J.  Bush,  "Hibernia  Curiosa.  A  Letter  from  a  Gentleman  in  Dublin  to 
his  Friend  at  Dover  in  Kent.  Giving  a  general  View  of  the  Manners,  Cus- 
toms, Dispositions,  etc.  of  the  Inhabitants  of  Ireland.  .  .  .  Collected  in  a 
Tour  through  the  Kingdom  in  the  Year  1764,"  P-  30.     Dublin,  1769. 

159 


i6o 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


here  the  Chaise-marine,  which  is  nothing  less  or  more  than  any 
common  car  with  one  horse.  A  simple  kind  of  carriage,  con- 
structed with  a  pair  of  wheels,  or  thin  round  blocks,  of  about 
twenty  inches  in  diameter,  an  axle,  and  two  shafts,  which,  over 


Fig.  33. 
Irish  Low-Back  Car  (1769)  ;  after  Bush. 

the  axle,  are  spread  out  a  little  wider  than  by  the  sides  of  the 
horse,  and  framed  together  with  cross  pieces,  in  such  manner  as 
to  be  nearly  in  a  level  position  for  three  or  four  feet  across  the 
axle.  These  simple  constructions  are  almost  the  only  kind  of 
carts,  in  common  use,  for  the  carrying  or  moving  of  goods, 
merchandise  of  every  kind,  hay,  straw,  corn,  dung,  turf,  etc., 
throughout  the  kingdom. 

"  A  sketch  of  the  figure  and  construction  of  one  of  these  cars 
I  have  here  given,  and,  when  used  for  parties  of  pleasure,  on  the 
level  part  LL  is  laid  a  mat,  for  the  commonalty,  and  for  the 
genteeler  sort  of  people  a  bed  is  put  on  this;  and  half  a  dozen 
get  on,  two  behind  and  two  on  each  side,  and  away  they  drive, 
with  their  feet  not  above  six  inches  from  the  ground  as  they  sit, 
on  little  pleasurable  jaunts  of  three  or  four  or  half  a  dozen  miles 
out  of  town ;  and  are  the  most  sociable  carriages  in  use,  for  ten  or 
a  dozen  will  take  one  of  these  chaise-marines,  and  ride  it  by  turns, 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE   IRISH  JAUNTING-CAR  l6l 

the  rate  being  seldom,  in  such  cases,  more  than  foot  pace.  I 
assure  you  they  are  the  drollest,  merriest  curricles  you  ever  saw. 
We  were  infinitely  diverted  at  meeting  many  of  these  feather-bed 
chaise-marine  parties,  on  the  Sunday  that  we  landed,  coming  out 
of  town,  as  we  went  up  to  it  from  Dunlary. "  1 

Twelve  years  later  the  author  of  A  Tour  through  Ireland'1 
alludes  to  the  same  method  of  conveyance.  After  describ- 
ing the  ordinary  block-wheel  car,  he  continues:  "  They  are 
frequently  used  as  vehicles  for  the  common  people  on  their 
parties  of  pleasure ;  a  bed  or  a  mat  is  at  such  times  placed 
on  the  car,  and  half  a  dozen  people  sit  on  it,  with  their  legs 
hanging  a  few  inches  from  the  ground ;  they  are  generally 
dragged  a  foot-pace."  The  author  (Twiss)  was  severely 
criticised  after  the  appearance  of  this  book,  and  subse- 
quently he  printed  a  metrical  reply  to  his  critics,  which, 
though  it  gives  an  amusing  description  of  the  embryonic 
jaunting-car,  can  scarcely  be  credited  with  mollifying  them. 
His  "  Heroic   Answer  "  3  is  as  follows: 

"  Well  might  an  artist  travel  from  afar 
To  view  the  structure  of  a  low-backed  car. 
A  downy  mattress  on  the  car  is  laid, 
The  rev'rend  father  mounts,  and  tender  maid; 
Some  back  to  back,  some  side  by  side  are  placed. 

By  dozens  thus,  full  many  a  Sunday  morn, 
With  dangling  legs  the  jovial  crowd  is  borne; 
Clontarf  they  seek,  or  Howth's  aspiring  brow, 
Or  Lexlip,  smiling  on  the  stream  below. 
When  ease  and  cheapness  would  thy  Twiss  engage, 
Cars  be  preferr'd  to  noddies  or  to  stage." 

1  The  accompanying  illustration  is  taken  from  the  Dublin  edition  ;  the  book 
was  reprinted  in  London  in  the  same  year,  but  the  corresponding  illustration 
was  evidently  taken  from  a  very  poor  sketch,  and  shows  an  almost  impossible 
sort  of  vehicle.  *  Twiss,  A  Tour  through  Ireland,  London,  1776,  p.  3. 

3  Repository,  a  Collection  0/  Fugitive  Pieces,  ed.  by  J.  Reed,  1790. 


1 62  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Fifty  years  later  the  old  low-back  car  was  nearly  com- 
pletely superseded  throughout  Ireland  by  the  ordinary  cart. 
The  Halls  '  thus  describe  it  in  its  declining  days: 

"  The  car,  or  rather  cart,  used  by  the  peasantry,  requires 
some  notice.  Flat  boards  are  placed  across  it,  and  upon  these 
straw  is  laid,  and  often  a  feather  bed.  The  one  described  in  the 
engraving  has  the  old-fashioned  wheels  cut  out  of  a  solid  piece 
of  wood.  These  vehicles  are  now,  however,  nearly  obsolete;  we 
met  but  few  of  them  during  our  latest  journey;  their  unfitness 
having  been  understood,  they  have  given  way  before  modern 
improvement." 

Hone,  in  his  Every-day  Book  (1824),  ii.,  p.  239,  says  that 
the  country  car  always  had  the  wheels  outside  the  shafts; 
ropes  were  intertwisted  across  the  rails  (Fig.  25),  and  on 
these  a  ticking  stuffed  with  straw,  or  a  quilt,  was  laid. 

About  the  beginning  of  this  century  it  occurred  to  some 
one  in  Dublin  to  protect  the  legs  of  passengers  from  getting 
in  the  way  of  the  wheels,  and  from  being  splashed  with  the 
mud,  by  attaching  a  foot-board  to  the  sides  of  the  flat  cart. 
Two  boards  were  also  placed  along  the  cart  in  such  a  way  as 
to  support  the  travellers'  backs  and  to  leave  a  space  between 
them  in  which  the  luggage  could  be  placed.  As  in  the  case 
of  many  other  inventors,  the  name  has  not  been  preserved 
of  this  benefactor  to  the  riding  public  of  Ireland.  This 
obvious  improvement  at  once  "  caught  on,"  and,  in  1806, 
Sir  John  Carr2  makes  one  of  his  first  allusions  to  the  jaunt- 
ing-car.     He  says: 

"  Upon  the  road  we  saw  several  carriages  peculiar  to  the 
country;  that  which  struck  me  most  was  the  jaunting-car,   an 

1  Mr.  and  Mrs.  S.  C.  Hall,  Ireland :  its  Scenery,  Character,  etc.,  London, 
1841,  i.,  p.  65. 

2  John  Carr,  The  Stranger  in  Ireland ;  or  a  Tour  in  .  .  .  etc.,  in  the  year 
1805,  London,  1806,  p.  32. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE  IRISH  JAUNTING-CAR  163 

open  carriage,  mounted  upon  two  small  wheels,  drawn  by  one 
horse,  in  which  the  company  sit  back  to  back,  and  hence  the 
Irish,  in  badinage,  call  it  an  Irish  vis-a-vis  ;  whilst,  on  the  other 
hand,  considering  the  position  of  the  parties  and  of  the  coach- 
man, who  is  elevated  in  front,  I  have  heard  it  more  appropriately, 
though  less  delicately,  nominated  the  cid-a-cid.  This  carriage  is 
very  convenient  and  easy,  and  will  carry  six  persons  besides  the 
coachman."  * 

Thirty  years  later  Mr.  Inglis  8  informs  us  that  the  car  had 
spread  all  over  Ireland : 

"  Although  there  are  carriages  of  all  descriptions  in  Ireland, 
and  coaches  too  on  many  of  the  public  roads,  the  jaunting-car  is 
the  national  vehicle,  and  Ireland  would  scarcely  be  Ireland 
without  it.  It  may  be  said  completely  to  supersede,  as  a  private 
vehicle,  the  whole  of  the  gig  tribe — dennet,  tilbury,  cabriolet, 
etc. — and  to  be  a  formidable  rival  to  the  coach  as  a  public 
conveyance." 

Two  years  later  Barrow  '  published  his  Tour  round  Ire- 
land ;  but  he  does  not  give  a  flattering  account  of  the 
jaunting-car  of  his  date,  and  this  and  Maclise's  etching  of 
such  a  car  in  rainy  weather  which  illustrated  Barrow's  book 
were  severely  handled  by  a  patriotic  reviewer  in  the  Dublin 
Penny  Journal  of  May  21,  1836.  Two  woodcuts,  which  are 
said  to  be  caricatures,  are  given  on  p.  371 ;  but  they  illus- 
trate the  kind  of  jaunting-car  then  in  vogue.     Barrow  thus 

1  This  paragraph  was  transcribed  by  E.  Dubois  in  his  jeu  dy  esprit  on  Sir 
John's  book  :  E.  Dubois,  "  My  Pocket  Book,  or  Hints  for  a  Ryghte  Merrie  and 
Conceited  Tour  in  410.,  to  be  called  '  The  Stranger  in  Ireland  in  1805,  by  a 
Knight  Errant,'  and  dedicated  to  the  paper-makers,"  London,  1S07.  Neither 
Carr's  nor  Dubois'  figures  of  the  jaunting-car  are  of  sufficient  interest  to  be 
reproduced  here. 

2  H.  D.  Inglis,  Ireland  in  1834.  A  Journey  throiighout  Ireland,  London, 
1834,  i.,  p.  24. 

3  Barrow,  A  Tour  round  Ireland,  through  the  Sea-coast  Counties,  in  the  year 
1S35,  London,   1836. 


164  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

relates  his  first  experience  of  this  vehicle.     Immediately  on 
his  arrival  at  Kingstown  he  was  asked : 

"  '  Would  your  honour  plase  to  have  an  inside  or  an  outside 
car  ?  '  '  My  good  fellow,  let  me  know  what  the  difference  is, 
and  I  will  tell  you.'  '  The  difference,  sure,  is  this:  the  inside 
car  has  the  wheels  outside,  and  the  outside  car  the  wheels  inside. ' 
After  this  luminous  exposition,  I  thought  it  best  to  see  them,  and 
made  choice  of  an  outside  one.  '  What  shall  I  do,'  said  I,  '  if 
it  rains  ?  '  '  Change  sides  wid  me,  your  honour,  and  if  the  rain 
comes  in  front,  go  over  to  the  opposite  side  and  take  it  in  the 


An  earlier  writer  in  that  famous  publication,  The  Dublin 
Penny  Journal,  has  displayed  his  patriotism  by  singing  the 
praises  of  the  jaunting-car : 

11  Who  that  has  watched,"  writes  the  anonymous  author,  '*  the 
beautiful  daughters  of  the  '  Green  Isle  '  borne  through  the  streets 
of  our  extending  metropolis  on  this  handsome  and  commodious 
vehicle  ' '  [the  author  is  here  referring  to  a  private  car,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  cars  that  plied  for  hire],  "  that  will  not  feel 
curious  to  know  from  what  humble  principle  it  has  thus  risen  to 
perfection.  And  in  good  time  have  I  met  with  Master  Bush's 
Hibemia  Curiosa j  he  was  a  careful  and  observant  traveller." 
[The  quotation  is  then  printed  which  we  have  just  given  from 
Bush.]  "  Such  was  the  jaunting-car  of  Ireland  in  1764,  and 
could  the  honest  gentleman  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  this 
description  '  revisit  the  glimpses  of  the  moon,'  and  see  the 
vehicle  of  1832,  how  great  would  be  his  praises  and  surprise." 
(Vol.  i.,  July  14,  1832,  p.  20,  with  woodcut.) 

In  their  charming  book  on  Ireland  Mr.  and  Mrs.  S.  C. 
Hall '  refer  at  length  to  the  various  vehicles  in  use  in  1 841  : 

1  Loc.  cit.y  p.  64. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE   IRISH  JAUNTING-CAR  165 

"  The  outside  jaunting-car  is  that  to  which  especial  reference 
is  made  when  speaking  of  the  '  Irish  '  car.  It  is  exceedingly- 
light,  presses  very  little  upon  the  horse,  and  is  safe  as  well  as 
convenient;  so  easy  is  it  to  get  on  and  off,  that  both  are  fre- 
quently done  while  the  machine  is  in  motion.  It  is  always  driven 
with  a  single  horse;  the  driver  occupies  a  small  seat  in  front,  and 
the  travellers  sit  back-to-back,1  the  space  between  them  being 
occupied  by  '  the  well  ' — a  sort  of  boot  for  luggage;  but  when 
there  is  only  one  passenger  the  driver  usually  places  himself  on 
the  opposite  seat  '  to  balance  the  car,'  the  motion  of  which 
would  be  awkward  if  one  side  was  much  heavier  than  the  other. 


Fig.  34. 
Early  Form  of  Jaunting-Car  (1841) ;  after  Hall. 

The  foot  '  board  '  is  generally  of  iron,  and  is  made  to  move  on 
hinges,  so  that  it  may  be  turned  up  to  protect  the  cushions  during 
rain.  This  foot-board  projects  considerably  beyond  the  wheels, 
and  would  seem  to  be  dangerous;  but  in  cases  of  collision  with 
other  vehicles,  a  matter  of  no  very  rare  occurrence,  the  feet  are 
raised,  and  injury  is  sustained  only  by  the  machine.  The  private 
cars  of  this  description  are,  of  course,  neatly  and  carefully  made, 
and  have  a  character  of  much  elegance;  but  those  which  are  hired 
are,  in  general,  badly  built,  dirty,  and  uncomfortable;  yet  in 
nine  places  out  of  ten  the  traveller  has  no  chance  of  obtaining  a 

1  This  arrangement  has  been  characterised  as  unsocial  ;  but  conversation  is 
easily  carried  on  by  leaning  across  "  the  well."  Its  disadvantage  is  that  the 
eye  can  take  in  but  the  half  of  a  landscape. 


1 66  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

vehicle  of  any  other  description,  and  will  often  find,  even  in  a 
populous  town,  that  if  '  the  car  '  be  out,  he  must  wait  until  its 
return;  cars  are  seldom  more  numerous  than  '  head  inns,'  that  is 
to  say,  one  generally  suffices  for  a  town. 

'*  Clonmel  has  been  rendered  '  famous  '  in  modern  Irish  his- 
tory by  the  successful  exertions  of  a  single  individual,  of  whom 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  he  has  done  more  to  improve  the 
condition  of  the  peasantry  and  the  country  than  any  other  person 
of  our  age.  We  refer  to  Mr.  Charles  Bianconi,  and  the  travelling- 
cars  that  bear  his  name.  He  is  a  native  of  Milan;  and  about  the 
year  1800  voyaged  to  Ireland,  first  visiting  Dublin,  and  subse- 
quently settling  in  Clonmel,  where  he  carried  on  the  trade  of  a 
picture  dealer  and  cleaner  and  frame  maker,  but  upon  a  very 
limited  scale.  ...  By  habits  of  industry,  prudence,  and 
forethought  he  contrived  to  save  money.  .  .  .  He  conceived 
the  design  of  running  a  public  car,  that  by  conveying  passengers 
at  a  much  less  expense  than  the  stage  coaches,  might  answer  the 
purposes  of  the  comparatively  humbler  classes.  He  ran  his  first 
car — from  Clonmel  to  Cahir — on  the  5th  of  July,  181 5.  The  ex- 
periment was  very  discouraging  at  the  commencement;  he  was 
frequently  for  whole  weeks  without  obtaining  a  passenger;  but 
his  energy  and  perseverance  ultimately  triumphed,  and  he  has 
succeeded  in  obtaining  a  large  fortune  for  himself  while  con- 
ferring immense  benefit  on  the  community;  having  preserved  an 
irreproachable  character  and  gained  the  respect  of  all  classes."  ' 

The  Halls  inform  us  that  in  1840  Bianconi's  stud  consisted 
of  1300  horses,  "  a  larger  number  than  her  Majesty  posses- 
ses in  Ireland,"  his  cars  travelled  daily  3500  miles,  and 
visited  no  fewer  than  128  cities  and  towns.  It  is  difficult  at 
the  present  time,  with  our  intricate  system  of  traffic,  to  realise 
what  a  boon  Bianconi's  cars  must  have  been  to  the  residents 
in  the  more  remote  country  towns  and  districts,  though 
we  may  well  believe  that  matters  had  improved  since  1760, 
when  Derrick  wrote  that  he  set  out  from  Cork  for  Killarney 

1  Loc.  cit. ,  ii. ,  p.  76. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE  IRISH  JAUNTING-CAR  1 67 

"  on  horseback,  the  city  of  Corke  not  affording  at  this  time 
any  sort  of  carriage  for  hire." 

The  sympathetic  travellers,  from  whom  so  much  has 
already  been  quoted,  carefully  describe  the  various  vehicles 
they  came  across  in  Ireland.  One  more  extract  must  be 
made: 

"  Machines  for  travelling  in  Ireland  are,  some  of  them  at  least, 
peculiar  to  the  country.  The  stage-coaches  are  precisely  similar 
to  those  in  England,  and  travel  at  as  rapid  a  rate.  They,  of 
course,  run  upon  all  the  great  roads,  and  are  constructed  with 
due  regard  to  safety  and  convenience.  The  public  cars  of  M. 
Bianconi  have,  however,  to  a  large  extent,  displaced  the  regular 
coaches,  and  are  to  be  encountered  in  every  district  of  the  south 
of  Ireland.  In  form  they  resemble  the  common  outside  jaunting- 
car,  but  are  calculated  to  hold  twelve,  fourteen,  or  sixteen  per- 
sons; they  are  well  horsed,  have  cautious  and  experienced  drivers, 
are  generally  driven  with  three  horses,  and  usually  travel  at  the 
rate  of  seven  Irish  miles  an  hour;  the  fares  averaging  about  two- 
pence per  mile.  They  are  open  cars;  but  a  huge  apron  of  leather 
affords  considerable  protection  against  rain;  and  they  may  be 
described  as,  in  all  respects,  very  comfortable  and  convenient 
vehicles.  It  would  be  difficult  for  a  stranger  to  conceive  the  im- 
mense influence  which  this  establishment  has  had  upon  the  char- 
acter and  condition  of  the  country;  its  introduction,  indeed,  has 
been  only  second  to  that  of  steam  in  promoting  the  improvement 
of  Ireland,  by  facilitating  intercourse  between  remote  districts, 
and  enabling  the  farmer  to  transact  his  own  business  at  a  small 
expense  and  with  little  sacrifice  of  time."  ' 

All  subsequent  travellers  in  the  remoter  parts  of  Ireland 
have  profited  by  the  example  set  by  Bianconi,  for  "  long- 
cars,"  as  they  are  usually  termed,  are  still  an  important 
means  of  conveyance. 

Like  Bianconi,   the  Right  Hon.  A.  J.   Balfour  was  im- 

1  Loc.  cit.,  i.,  p.  63. 


1 68  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

pressed  with  the  fact  that  a  facile  and  cheap  means  of  con- 
veyance is  essential  to  material  progress,  and  so  he  instituted 
the  system  of  light  railways  in  Ireland.  Whether  this 
scheme  has  succeeded  or  not,  or  whether  a  service  of  auto- 
cars may  not  prove  to  be  more  efficacious,  may  be  open  to 
question  ;  but  there  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  desirability, 
one  may  safely  say  the  necessity,  of  cheap  and  rapid  means 
of  conveyance. 

By  comparing  the  illustrations  of  the  outside  car  of  fifty 
years  ago  (Fig.  32)  with  that  of  the  present  day  (Plate  V., 
Fig.  2),  one  can  at  a  glance  see  that  the  machine  has  been 
greatly  improved,  the  last  refinement  being  the  addition  of 
pneumatic  tires  to  the  wheels. 

It  is  not  devoid  of  interest  to  consider  how  far  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  cart  and  outside  car  can  be  compared  with  the 
evolution  of  animals,  and  perhaps  the  analogy  is  not  so  far 
fetched  as  it  may  appear  at  first  sight. 

In  both  cases  the  evolution  is  undirected  so  far  as  the 
subjects  of  it  are  concerned;  but  in  the  case  of  the  cart  the 
evolution  is  determined  by  a  reasoning  being,  instead  of  by 
"  natural  selection."  An  extended  study  of  the  history 
and  evolution  of  manufactured  objects  leads  one,  however, 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  human  intelligence  does  not  make 
itself  so  much  felt  as  one  would  expect.  As  a  general  rule 
the  improvements  on  previous  objects  are  slight,  and  often 
take  a  long  time  to  be  discovered ;  but  when  once  adopted 
there  is  a  tendency  for  them  to  spread  with  comparative 
rapidity,  and  to  be  subject  to  a  number  of  progressive 
modifications,  until  another  stationary  phase  is  arrived  at. 
In  other  words,  the  process  of  evolution  of  manufactured 
objects  is  apt  to  be  spasmodic;  periods  of  active  metamor- 
phosis are  preceded  and  succeeded  by  periods  of  stagnation. 

So  far  as  the  palaeontological  evidence  goes,  while  one 


Plate  V. 


-dflfe* 


Fig.  i.     Basque  Ox-Waggon  ;  after  Telesforo  de  Aranzadi 


FlG.  2.     Irish  Outside-  or  Jaunting-Car  ;  from  a  photograph  by  Welch. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE  IRISH  JAUNTING-CAR  1 69 

may  be  convinced  that  the  fossil  remains  of  a  given  period 
are  genetically  related  to  those  of  the  beds  above  and  below 
it,  one  cannot  always  be  sure  whether  certain  fossils  are 
actually  related  in  the  direct  line  to  other  remains  in  a  super- 
posed stratum.  There  may  be  strong  presumptive  evidence 
without  a  positive  assurance — the  record  being  too  imper- 
fect for  absolute  proof. 

Among  living  animals  we  find  forms  in  any  one  group 
which  belong  to  various  stages  of  specialisation.  In  some 
cases  highly  specialised  types  may  live  side  by  side  with 
comparatively  undifferentiated  forms,  the  latter  often  recall- 
ing, though  in  an  imperfect  degree,  some  of  the  stages 
through  which  the  higher  type  may  have  previously  passed. 
It  is  not  always  easy  to  suggest  a  reason  why  some  low 
types  should  persist  and  others  perish.  The  fact  remains 
that  such  is  the  case.  In  almost  all  groups  of  animals  we 
have  examples  of  the  persistence  of  some  types  for  periods 
which,  even  speaking  in  a  geological  sense,  may  be  termed 
vast. 

The  persistence  of  the  slide-car  and  various  forms  of 
block-wheel  car  is  thus  analogous  to  what  we  find  among 
animals.  The  reason  for  this  continuance  is  another  matter, 
and  requires  an  explanation,  though  we  cannot  expect  that 
this  will  hold  good  for  carts  and  animals  alike. 

We  may  provisionally  assume  that  the  solid  wheel,  in  all 
countries,  preceded  the  spoke-wheel,  wherever  the  latter  oc- 
curs, except  in  those  cases  where  the  spoke-wheel  was  intro- 
duced into  a  previously  wheelless  district.  The  spoke-wheel 
could  never  have  been  invented  de  novo.  As  primitive  types 
may  persist  under  certain  conditions,  we  may  further  as- 
sume that  existing  vehicles  with  solid  wooden  wheels  are  the 
direct  descendants  of  more  ancient  types,  and  where  they 
occur  along  with  spoke-wheels  they  may  be  regarded  as  lag- 
gards in  evolution. 


170  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

The  argument  for  the  slide-car  is  not  so  satisfactory. 
There  is  no  proof  whatever  that  the  slide-car  was  the  first 
stage  in  the  evolution  of  the  cart,  either  in  Ireland  or  else- 
where. Probably  the  evidence  will  never  be  conclusive  on 
this  point.  There  is  a  strong  presumption  in  favour  of  this 
theory  for  the  British  Islands;  but  as  the  vast  bulk  of  our 
culture  was  derived  from  the  mainland  of  Europe,  we  may 
have  owed  our  primitive  carts  to  the  Celts.  Classical  au- 
thorities agree  in  ascribing  the  use  of  carts  or  waggons  and 
chariots  to  the  Gauls  and  other  Celtic  tribes,  and  we  know 
that  two  thousand  five  hundred  years  ago  these  peoples  had 
both  solid-wheeled  and  spoke-wheeled  vehicles,  but  there 
is  no  mention  made  of  the  slide-car.  It  is  a  curious  fact 
that  block-wheels  and  their  variants  (i.  e.,  those  wheels  that 
are  without  radiating  spokes)  are  found  in  many  of  the 
least  Aryanised  parts  of  Europe ;  and  it  is  tempting  to  sup- 
pose this  may  be  the  characteristic  wheel  of  the  pre-Aryan 
agriculturalists. 

There  are  numerous  striking  examples  of  the  persistence 
of  non-specialised  animals  in  the  remote  parts  of  the  earth. 
For  example,  the  mud-fishes  are  found  only  in  Australia, 
parts  of  Central  Africa,  and  tropical  South  America.  The 
great,  running,  flightless  birds,  such  as  the  ostrich,  occur 
only  in  New  Zealand,  Australia,  New  Guinea,  and  some 
neighbouring  islands,  Africa,  and  South  America.  The 
lowest  of  all  the  mammals,  the  egg-laying  duck-mole,  is 
found  only  in  Australia  and  Tasmania,  while  the  spiny  ant- 
eater  also  extends  into  New  Guinea.  These  examples  could 
be  greatly  increased,  but  they  will  suffice  to  illustrate  this 
point. 

The  generally  received  explanation  of  these  facts  is  that 
the  ancestors  of  these  forms  at  one  time  inhabited  the 
northern  continents,  and,  as  opportunity  offered,  they  grad- 
ually extended   southwards,  and   owing  to    sinking  in  the 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE  IRISH  JAUNTING-CAR  171 

earth's  crust,  or  to  other  geographical  changes,  they  became 
isolated  in  the  more  remote  spots.  For  some  reason  or 
other,  which  does  not  concern  us  now,  the  great  northern 
continents  were  the  seat  of  the  evolution  of  the  higher  forms 
of  mammalian  life,  perhaps  even  of  vertebrates  generally,  and 
in  the  keenness  of  the  struggle  for  existence  the  less  special- 
ised forms  were  usually  at  a  disadvantage,  and  if  they  could 
not  adapt  themselves  to  new  conditions  they  had  to  die  out. 
The  great  southern  land  areas  were  only  temporarily  con- 
nected with  the  northern  lands  at  various  periods,  and  so 
they  received  consignments  of  low-grade  animals  at  various 
periods,  and  these  lower  types  were  able  to  continue.  For 
example,  New  Zealand  was  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  the 
world  before  any  snakes  or  terrestrial  mammals  had  wan- 
dered so  far.  Australia  received  a  contingent  of  only  the  two 
lowest  groups  of  mammals.  Africa,  south  of  Sahara,  for  a 
long  time  was  stocked  with  other  mammals  of  a  low  type, 
for  it  is  only  comparatively  recently  that  the  higher  mam- 
mals, such  as  elephants,  antelopes,  lions,  leopards,  and  the 
like,  have  been  able  to  migrate  from  their  home  in  Europe 
and  to  swarm  across  or  around  the  Sahara  barrier;  but  being 
higher  types  they  have  supplanted  and  largely  exterminated 
the  lower  forms. 

This  is  pretty  much  what  we  find  among  the  carts  we 
have  studied.  In  some  of  the  remote  and  backward  parts 
of  the  mainland  of  Europe  lumbering  carts  with  solid 
wooden  wheels  still  persist.  In  the  western  parts  of  the 
British  Islands,  where  competition  has  not  been  so  keen, 
earlier  types  have  been  isolated  and  continued  down  to  our 
own  day,  and  it  may  well  be  that  the  slide-car  is  really  an 
ancestral  form  which  has  been  preserved  in  the  islands  at 
the  fag-end  of  Europe. 

There  are  also  some  points  of  interest  in  connection  with 
the  evolution  of  the  jaunting-car.     There  is  contemporary 


172  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

evidence  to  show  that  the  means  for  the  conveyance  of 
passengers  in  Ireland  up  to  the  beginning  of  this  century- 
left  a  great  deal  to  be  desired.  Hackney-coaches  had  been 
introduced  from  England,  but  they  were  expensive  to  hire. 
One-horse  vehicles  appear  to  have  been  employed  in  Ireland 
long  before  the  London  cab  was  borrowed  from  Paris,  which 
was  virtually  in  1823,  although  nine  cabriolets  were  licensed 
for  parts  of  London  in  1805.  Mr.  Hansom  did  not  invent 
his  two-wheeled  modification  till  1834;  but  the  present 
"  hansom-cab  "  was  really  the  invention  of  Mr.  John  Chap- 
man, who  patented  it  at  the  end  of  1836. 

Early  in  the  eighteenth  century  the  "  Ringsend  Car  " 
plied  between  Dublin  and  Irishtown.  It  consisted,  accord- 
ing to  the  authors  1  of  a  History  of  the  City  of  Dublin,  of  a 
seat  suspended  on  a  strap  of  leather  between  two  shafts,  and 
without  springs.  The  noise  made  by  the  creaking  of  this 
strap,  which  supported  the  whole  weight  of  the  company, 
peculiarly  distinguished  this  mode  of  conveyance.  This 
was  succeeded  by  the  "  Noddy,"  a  kind  of  cramped,  covered 
one-horse  shay,  and  so  called  from  its  oscillating  motion 
backwards  and  forwards;  it  disappeared  about  the  same 
time  as  the  century.  The  low-backed  car  was  then  in  pro- 
cess of  evolution  into  the  jaunting-car,  but,  in  1806,  a  new 
vehicle  sprang  into  existence;  this  was  the  noisy  four- 
wheeled  "  Jingle,"  which  had  a  period  of  popularity  for 
thirty  years,  and  finally  gave  place  to  the  outside  jaunting- 
car.  The  inside  jaunting-car  was  also  in  use  about  this 
time;  it  may  have  had  its  origin  from  seats  being  placed 
along  the  sides  of  an  ordinary  cart  in  such  a  manner  that 
the  passengers  faced  one  another,  their  legs  being  inside  the 
conveyance.  A  little  later,  a  cover  was  added  to  the  latter, 
and  so  the  "  covered  car  "  was  arrived  at,  the  last  of  which, 

1  J.  Warburton,  J.  Whitelaw,  and  R.  Walsh,  History  of  the  City  of  Dublin, 
London,  1818,  ii.,  p.  1173. 


THE   ORIGIN  OF  THE  IRISH  JAUNTING-CAR  1 73 

it  is  stated,  was  seen  in  Dublin  some  dozen  or  so  years  ago. 
All  these  one-horse  vehicles  have  been  beaten  in  the  struggle 
for  existence  by  the  outside  or  jaunting-car,  which  has  prac- 
tically not  only  vanquished  coaches  in  the  past,  but  has  pre- 
vented the  hansom-cab  from  establishing  itself  in  Dublin. 
The  ordinary  cab  is  too  useful  in  wet  weather  and  for  carrying 
mggage  to  be  much  affected  by  the  competition  of  the  car. 

We  have  seen  how  rapidly  this  vehicle  spread  over  Ire- 
land, being  adapted  in  many  ways  to  the  country.  It  was 
elongated  by  Bianconi,  and  proved  in  his  hands,  and  in 
those  of  his  imitators,  an  important  factor  in  the  betterment 
of  the  condition  of  the  small  farmer  in  country  districts. 

There  was  a  need  in  Dublin  during  the  last  century  for 
light  one-horse  vehicles ;  several  writers  connect  this  with 
the  fashion  at  that  time  for  sea-bathing.  In  response  to 
the  demand  came  a  supply ;  the  slow  "  Ringsend  Car  "  gave 
place  to  the  objectionable  "  Noddy,"  the  rackety  "  Jingle  " 
supplanted  the  "  Noddy,"  and  had  a  short  but  brilliant 
career.  When  the  "  Noddy  "  was  in  its  decline,  the  pre- 
historic, low-backed  car  was  unostentatiously  being  trans- 
formed into  the  outside  car,  and  when  it  was  perfected  the 
noisy,  swift  "  Jingle  "  yielded  to  the  superior  qualities  of 
its  rival.  All  these  vehicles  were  of  purely  local  origin,  but, 
so  far  as  the  available  evidence  shows,  the  jaunting-car 
alone  belongs  to  the  same  sequence  as  the  ordinary  Irish 
cart  of  the  last  century. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

TOYS  AND  GAMES:  CAT'S  CRADLE  AND  KITES 

AT  first  sight  it  does  not  appear  that  games  played  by 
children  would  afford  a  very  profitable  field  for  invest- 
igation, but  if  we  wish  to  learn  all  we  can  about  mankind 
no  branch  of  inquiry  should  be  neglected.  I  shall  endeavour 
in  this  and  the  following  chapters  to  indicate  some  of  the 
conclusions  which  may  be  drawn  therefrom. 

The  games  played  by  children  have  a  very  varied  origin, 
and  a  similarly  unequal  value  to  the  student.  Before  we 
consider  the  games  played  by  our  children  it  is  desirable  to 
glance  at  those  played  by  savages. 

The  children  of  savages  play  at  the  occupations  of  their 
elders,  and  the  boys  will  have  their  toy  bows  and  arrows; 
where  the  natives  spear  fish,  boys  and  girls  will  have  toy 
fishing-spears,  with  which  they  attempt  to  catch  fish.  They 
play  with  toy  canoes,  and  so  forth.  Even  when  the  adults 
have  discarded  a  weapon  such  as  the  bow  and  arrow  for  a 
more  serviceable  weapon,  the  children  will  continue  their 
toy — whether  it  be  in  New  Guinea  or  in  England.  Our 
English  boys  still  delight  in  the  implements  of  warfare  of 
their  barbaric  ancestors,  such  as  the  bow  and  arrow,  the 
sling,  the  sword  and  shield.  The  memory  of  these  has  been 
preserved  from  generation  to  generation  through  the  un- 
broken continuity  of  boyish  practice. 

Games  of  ball  have  now  with  us  purely  a  diversional  char- 

174 


TOYS  AND   GAMES  •  175 

acter,  but  it  seems  probable  that  even  this  harmless  amuse- 
ment has  a  somewhat  sinister  history. 

Mr.  Newell,  the  distinguished  American  folklorist,  reminds 
us  that  in  England,  country  folk  speak  of  the  "  camp-game  " 
of  ball  and  of  the  "  camping-ground."  Pollux,  writing  in 
Greek  in  the  second  century,  gave  an  account  of  the  "  com- 
mon ball,"  or  "  ball-battle,"  of  his  day.  Almost  exactly 
the  same  was  the  ancient  Norse  game,  except  that  the 
resemblance  to  warfare  was  closer.  Playing  the  game  was 
called  "  kemping"  from  Kemp,  a  warrior  or  champion,  and 
the  field  was  a  "  kemping-ground."  The  Persians  and 
Turks  still  practise  a  different  sort  of  game,  which  is  played 
on  horseback.  The  Byzantine  court  adopted  from  the  East 
the  playing  on  horseback  and  the  racket,  but  introduced 
these  into  a  game  resembling  the  ancient  "  ball-battle." 
The  historian  Cinnamus  describes  the  Emperor  Manuel,  in 
the  twelfth  century,  as  fond  of  this  kind  of  polo. 

From  the  Eastern  custom  we  get  our  tennis,  whilst,  ac- 
cording to  Newell,  most  of  our  games  with  bat  and  ball  seem 
to  have  come  down  to  us  from  the  North.  "  The  history  of 
the  change  from  actual  to  imitative  warfare,  from  the  latter 
to  a  harmless  and  courtly  amusement  or  to  a  rustic  pastime, 
from  this  last  again  in  our  days  to  a  scientific  sport,  may 
supply  material  for  serious  reflection."  1  These  early  games 
of  ball  were  evidently  martial  exercises,  and  encouraged  for 
the  purpose  of  keeping  the  young  men  in  good  condition 
for  actual  warfare. 

Our  ^children  also  copy  the  actions  of  their  parents,  but  it 
is  noteworthy  that  they  prefer  the  more  primitive  to  the 
more  civilised  pursuits,  and  their  games  retain  more  of  the 
savage  character  than  is  typical  of  nineteenth-century  cul- 
ture.    The  love  of  playing  with  dolls  and  of  dressing  and 

1  W.   W.    Newell,    Games   and    Songs  of  American    Children,  New  York, 

1884,   pp.   177,    178. 


176  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

tending  them,  and  of  pretending  to  keep  house,  of  preparing 
food,  and  other  characteristics  of  girlhood,  fall  into  the 
same  category  as  the  hunting  and  martial  games  of  boys. 

There  are  other  games  which  may  be  regarded  as  being 
more  purely  diversional  in  character,  as,  for  example,  cer- 
tain of  the  games  of  ball  and  numerous  other  simple  amuse- 
ments. Many  of  these  are  played  equally  by  adults  and 
children,  whether  savage  or  civilised. 

Mr.  Stewart  Culin,  who  has  made  the  study  of  games  a 
specialty,  and  who  has  written  a  valuable  and  beautifully 
illustrated  work  on  the  subject,  from  which  I  have  made 
many  gleanings,  emphasises  the  fact  that  while  games  occur 
as  amusements  or  pastimes  among  civilised  men,  among 
savage  and  barbarous  peoples  they  are  largely  sacred  and 
divinatory;  and  this  naturally  suggests  a  sacred  and  divin- 
atory  origin  for  many  modern  games.  The  latter  have, 
however,  so  nearly  lost  their  original  meaning,  that  even 
with  the  light  afforded  by  history  it  is  practically  impossible 
to  trace  their  origin.  The  only  other  available  method  of 
inquiry  is  the  comparative  one,  and  it  will  be  found  that  I 
have  largely  availed  myself  of  this  in  the  following  essays, 
though  I  have  employed  the  more  strictly  historical  method 
wherever  possible. 

'■'  Games,"  1  says  Culin,  "  must  be  regarded,  not  as  conscious 
inventions  [here  he  is  speaking  in  general  terms],  but  as  survivals 
from  primitive  conditions,  under  which  they  originated  in  magical 
rites  and  chiefly  as  a  means  of  divination.  Based  upon  certain 
fundamental  conceptions  of  the  universe,  they  are  characterised 
by  a  certain  sameness,  if  not  identity,  throughout  the  world. 
Without  the  confirmation  of  linguistic  evidence,  they  are  insuffi- 
cient to  establish  the  connection  of  races  or  the  transference  of 
culture." 

1  Stewart  Culin,  Korean  Games :  with  Notes  on  the  Corresponding  Games  of 
China  and  Japan,  Philadelphia,  1895.     Introduction,  pp.  xvii.-xix.,  xxxiv. 


TOYS  AND   GAMES  \JJ 

The  most  important  point  elucidated  by  Culin  is  the 
proof  of  the  early  use  of  arrows  for  divining  purposes.  For 
convenience  the  arrows  were  flattened,  and  ultimately  were 
replaced  by  long  narrow  strips  of  cardboard,  on  one  side  of 
which  was  painted  a  distinctive  device,  while  on  the  other 
was  a  queer  design,  which  is  evidently  the  conventional 
representation  of  the  scar  of  the  leaf  which  primitively 
marked  the  shaft  of  the  arrow  when  it  was  actually  a  reed 
(Fig.  35)-  These  elongated  cards  were  shortened  and  broad- 
ened, and  from  them  have  been  derived  our  modern  playing- 


Fig.  35- 

Back  of  a  Korean  Playing-Card  ;   after  Culin. 

This  figure  was  kindly  lent  by  the  proprietors  of  the  Reliquary  and  Illustrated 
A  rcha-ologist. 

cards,  which  even  now  retain  amongst  the  credulous  a 
divinatory  property,  and  are  also  still  used  for  gambling  as 
well  as  for  more  innocent  amusement.  Korean  playing- 
cards  still  bear  representations  of  the  feathers  of  the  arrows 
from  which  they  were  derived,  and  their  Chinese  name 
varies  only  in  tone  from  that  of  the  arrow,  tsin. 

In  the  fourth  year  of  the  Hejira,  Mohammed  prohibited 
wine  and  Meisir ;  the  latter  was  a  gambling  game  of  the 
heathen  Arabs,  in  which  seven  arrows  were  shaken  from  a 
quiver. 

Another  remarkable  evolution  from  the  employment  of 
arrows  in  divination  is  that  of  the  Chinese  dominoes,  and 
Europe  has  borrowed  this  game  from  China.  Culin  calcu- 
lates that  of  the  ninety-seven  Korean  games  described  by 
him,  twenty-three  may  be  referred  to  the  arrow  employed  as 
an  implement  of  magic  or  divination. 

Lastly,  there  are  games  and  toys  which  are  the  secularised 


I 


178  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

and  degenerate  survivals  of  magical  practices  other  than 
purely  divinatory,  and  even  of  religious  rites,  although  these 
two  often  merge  into  one  another. 

I  have  taken  a  few  games  and  toys,  and  have  endeavoured 
to  work  out  their  history  as  an  illustration  of  the  methods 
of  modern  research.  The  evidence  is  at  present  incomplete, 
but  we  cannot  satisfactorily  determine  the  game  of  cat's 
cradle,  with  which  I  commence,  or  that  of  the  top,  in  the 
following  chapter,  to  be  other  than  simple  diversions.  The 
tug-of-war  was  probably  a  magical  rite,  and  kite-flying  had 
apparently  a  religious  significance.  Finally,  the  bull-roarer 
at  the  present  day  represents  the  three  aspects  of  amuse- 
ment, magic,  and  religion. 

cat's  cradle. 

One  child  holds  a  piece  of  string  joined  at  the  ends  on  his 
upheld  palms,  a  single  turn  being  taken  over  each,  and  by 
inserting  the  middle  finger  of  each  hand  under  the  opposite 
turn,  crosses  the  string  from  finger  to  finger  in  a  peculiar 
form.  Another  child  then  takes  off  the  string  on  his  fingers 
in  a  rather  different  way,  and  it  then  assumes  a  second 
form.  A  repetition  of  this  manoeuvre  produces  a  third 
form,  and  so  on.  Each  of  these  forms  has  a  particular 
name,  from  a  fancied  resemblance  to  the  object — barn-doors, 
bowling-green,  hour-glass,  pound,  net,  fiddle,  fish-pond, 
diamonds,  and  others.1 

The  following  forms  are  those  known  to  Mrs.  Gomme. 
They  are  produced  seriatim. 

1.  The  cradle. 

2.  The  soldier's  bed. 

3.  Candles. 

4.  The  cradle  inversed,  or  manger. 

5.  Soldier's  bed  again,  or  diamonds. 

1  Notes  and  Queries,  vol.  xi.,  p.  421. 


CAT'S  CRADLE  1 79 

6.  Diamonds,  or  cat's  eyes. 

7.  Fish  in  dish. 

8.  Cradle,  as  at  first. 

The  different  orders  or  arrangements  must  be  taken  from 
the  hands  of  one  player  by  another  without  disturbing  the 
arrangement. 

Nares  suggests  that  the  proper  name  is  "  Cratch  Cradle," 
and  is  derived  from  the  archaic  word  cratch?  meaning  a 
manger.2  He  gives  several  authorities  for  its  use.  The 
first-made  form  is  not  unlike  a  manger.  Moor  {Suffolk 
Words)  gives  the  names  as  cat's  cradle,  barn-doors,  bowling- 
green,  hour-glass,  pound,  net,  diamonds,  fish-pond,  fiddle. 
A  supposed  resemblance  originated  them.  Britton  {Beauties 
of  Wiltshire,  Glossary)  says  the  game  in  London  schools  is 
called  "  Scratch-scratch,"  or  "  Scratch-cradle."  3 

Amongst  other  Korean  games  Mr.  Culin  4  has  investigated 
that  known  as  Ssi-teti-ki,  or  "  Woof-taking."  It  is  practi- 
cally identical  with  our  cat's  cradle,  as  is  usually  played  by 
girls.  The  figures,  which  are  the  same  as  in  our  own  child- 
ren's play,  are  named  as  follows:  (1)  cover  for  hearse,  (2) 
chess-board,  (3)  chop-sticks,  (4)  cow's  eyeball,  ($)  rice-mill 
pestle. 

"  In  Japan  cat's  cradle  is  called  aya  ito  tori — '  woof  pattern 
string-taking.'  The  figures  are  identical  with  those  in  Korea, 
but  receive  different  names.  (1)  [?];  (2)  nekomata,  defined  as 
'  a  mountain  cat,  into  which  a  domestic  cat  is  supposed  to  trans- 

1  In  the  Century  Dictionary  the  term  cratch  has  two  meanings,  "  a  grated 
manger,"  "  a  rack  or  open  framework." 

2  Murray,  in  The  New  English  Dictionary,  does  not  support  this  etymology. 

3  This  account  of  the  English  game,  with  the  references,  is  taken  from  Mrs. 
Gomme's  "The  Traditional  Games  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,"  i., 
Dictionary  of  British  Eolk-Lore,  Part  i.,  1S94,  p.  61. 

4  Stewart  Culin,  Korean  Games  :  with  Notes  en  the  Corresponding  Games  of 
China  and  Japan,  Philadelphia,  1895,  p.  30. 


l8o  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

form  itself;  (3)  koto,  a  musical  instrument,  or  geta  110  ha,  the 
two  pieces  of  wood  under  the  soles  of  clogs ;  (4)  umano  me,  horse- 
eye;  (5)  tsuzumi,  a  musical  instrument. 

11  In  South  China  cat's  cradle  is  called  kang  sok,  which  means 
literally  '  well-rope.'  It  is  spoken  of  as  an  amusement  for  girls, 
but  is  known  to  all  Cantonese  labourers.  They  make  the  same 
figures  as  those  of  Korea  and  Japan,  but  do  not,  they  tell  me, 
give  them  names.  The  order  of  the  figures,  after  the  first,  is  not 
necessarily  that  here  given." 

Miss  Fielde '  says  that  the  Chinese  of  Swatow  call  cat's 
cradle  "  sawing  wood,"  in  allusion  to  the  final  act  in  the 
performance. 

Dr.  A.  R.  Wallace,  the  famous  traveller,  who  formulated 
a  theory  of  natural  selection  synchronously  with  Darwin, 
thus  describes  2  his  finding  this  game  in  Borneo : 

"  One  wet  day  in  a  Dyak  house,  when  a  number  of  boys  and 
young  men  were  about  me,  I  thought  to  amuse  them  with  some- 
thing new,  and  showed  them  how  to  make  '  cat's  cradle  '  with  a 
piece  of  string.  Greatly  to  my  surprise,  they  knew  all  about  it, 
and  more  than  I  did,  for,  after  I  and  Charles  had  gone  through  all 
the  changes  we  could  make,  one  of  the  boys  took  it  off  my  hand, 
and  made  several  new  figures  which  quite  puzzled  me.  They 
then  showed  me  a  number  of  other  tricks  with  pieces  of  string, 
which  seemed  a  favourite  amusement  with  them." 

Lieutenant  de  Crespigny  3  writes  of  the  Dusuns  of  Borneo : 
"  Near  me  were  two  children  playing  at  '  cat's  cradle  ' 
exactly  as  I  remembered  to  have  played  it  in  my  own  child- 
hood." 

1  A  Corner  of  Cathay,  New  York,  1894,  p.  87. 
8  A.  R.  Wallace,  The  Malay  Archipelago,  i.,  1869,  p.  183. 
3  Proc.  R.  Geogr.  Soc.,  ii.,  1858,  p.  344.     Quoted  from  H.  Ling  Roth,  The 
Natives  of  Sarawak  and  British  North  Borneo,  i.,  1896,  p.  366. 


CAT'S   CRADLE  l8l 

The  knowledge  of  this  game  was  probably  common  to  the 
members  of  the  Polynesian  stock  before  they  separated 
into  different  groups,  as  we  find  it  in  the  Eastern  Pacific  in 
Mangaia,  one  of  the  Hervey  Group,  and  again,  so  far  south 
as  New  Zealand. 

Dr.  W.  Wyatt  Gill,1  the  illustrious  missionary  of  the 
Hervey  Group,  informs  us  that  "  cat's  cradle  {at)  was  a  great 
delight  to  old  and  young.  Teeth  were  called  into  play  to 
help  the  fingers.  One  complication,  in  which  the  cord  in 
the  centre  is  twisted  into  a  long  slender  stem,  and  therefore 
called  '  the  coco-nut  tree,'  I  have  never  known  a  European 
to  unravel." 

Two  early  travellers  give  us  the  following  accounts  of  the 
game  as  it  is  played  in  New  Zealand : 

11  He  what  or  maui. — The  '  cat's  cradle  '  is  a  game  very  similar 
to  our  own,  but  the  cord  is  made  to  assume  many  more  forms, 
and  these  are  said  to  be  different  scenes  in  their  mythology,  such 
as  Hine-nui-te-po,  Mother  Night  bringing  forth  her  progeny, 
Maru  and  the  gods,  and  Maui  fishing  up  the  land.  Men,  canoes, 
houses,  etc.,  are  also  represented.  Some  state  that  Maui  invented 
this  game."  2 

"  In  the  game  of  Maui  they  are  great  proficients.  This  is  a 
game  like  that  called  '  cat's  cradle  '  in  Europe,  and  consists  of 
very  complicated  and  perplexing  puzzles  with  a  cord  tied  together 
at  the  ends.  It  seems  to  be  intimately  connected  with  their 
ancient  traditions,  and  in  the  different  figures  which  the  cord  is 
made  to  assume,  whilst  held  on  both  hands,  the  outlines  of  their 
different  varieties  of  houses,  canoes,  or  figures  of  men  and  women 
are  imagined  to  be  represented.  Maui,  the  Adam  of  New  Zea- 
land, left  this  amusement  to  them  as  an  inheritance."  3 

1  W.  Wyatt  Gill,  Life  in  the  Southern  Isles,  1876,  p.  65. 

2  R.  Taylor,  Te  Ika  a  Maui  ;  or,  New  Zealand  and  its  Inhabitants,  London, 
1855,  p.  172. 

3E.  Dieffenbach,  Travels  in  New  Zealand,  vol.  ii.,  London,  1843,  p.  32. 


1 82  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Tregear '  also  mentions  the  representation  of  Tawhaki 
(lightning)  ascending  to  heaven. 

These  statements  are  very  interesting,  and  suggest  that 
we  have  here  to  do  with  some  symbolism  that  has  in  course 
of  time  become  obscured.  On  the  other  hand,  Maui  may 
be  merely  a  pastime,  and  the  string  figures  or  designs  may 
be  nothing  more  than  casual  illustrations  of  the  mythology 
of  the  natives.  There  do  not  appear  to  be  sufficient  data  at 
present  to  settle  this  point. 

Dr.  Codrington  2  says :  "  Cat's  cradle,  in  Lepers'  Island 
lelegaroy  in  Florida  honggo,  with  many  figures,  is  common 
throughout  the  [Melanesian]  Islands." 

The  Motu  children  of  Port  Moresby,  in  the  south-eastern 
peninsula  of  New  Guinea,  are  as  well  versed  in  the  intrica- 
cies of  cat's  cradle  as  are  our  own.3 

I  remember  once  going  into  a  native  hut  in  an  island  in 
Torres  Straits,  and  seeing  a  little  black  boy  playing  with  a 
piece  of  string,  the  two  ends  of  which  were  tied  together, 
in  much  the  same  manner  as  our  children  play  at  cat's  cradle. 
The  first  figure  that  he  made  with  it  was  precisely  the  same 
as  our  "  cradle,"  but  the  subsequent  ones  were  different. 
He  was  greatly  surprised  when  I  picked  the  string  off  his 
hands  to  make  "  the  soldier's  bed,"  which  I  then  trans- 
formed into  "  the  candles,"  back  into  the  "  reversed  man- 
ger," and  from  that  into  "  the  diamonds,"  and  so  on.  I 
found  that  a  couple  of  natives  did  not  play  together  as  we 
do,  "  taking  off"  from  each  other,  but  that  usually  each 
played  separately.  They  can  make  much  more  elaborate 
devices  than  ours,  and  the  process  is  correspondingly  elabo- 
rate, and  feet  and  teeth  are  at  times  pressed  into  service.    On 

1  E.  Tregear,  "The  Maoris  of  New  Zealand,"  yourn.  Anth.  Inst.,  xix., 
1889,  p.  115.  2  The  Melanesians,  1891,  p.  341. 

3  W.  Y.  Turner,  "  The  Ethnology  of  the  Motu,"  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  vii., 
1878,  p.  483. 


CAT'S   CRADLE  1 83 

the  other  hand,  although  many  are  extremely  complicated  in 
manipulation,  the  final  result  may  be  simple.  The  following 
are  some  of  the  forms  I  saw  the  natives  make :  A  mouth ;  a 
coco-nut  palm  ;  liana,  or  some  forest  rope-like  climber  ; 
a  fish;  a  crow;  a  dog;  a  crayfish,  certain  movements  of  the 
hands  represented  the  motions  of  the  living  animal ;  a  sea- 
snake,  which,  when  the  hands  were  drawn  apart,  had  an  un- 
dulating movement,  such  as  sea-snakes  have  in  swimming 
through  the  water;  one  figure  was  intended  for  a  canoe, 
without  an  outrigger,  and  another  for  one  with  an  outrigger; 
one,  by  a  stretch  of  the  imagination,  was  said  to  indicate  a 
family  of  one  pickaninny  (child),  and  yet  another  a  family 
of  two.1 

Among  the  Australians,  Eyre  *  remarks :  "  String  puzzles 
are  another  species  of  amusement  with  them.  In  these  a 
European  would  be  surprised  to  see  the  ingenuity  they 
display  and  the  varied  and  singular  figures  which  they  pro- 
duce. Our  juvenile  attempts  in  this  way  are  very  meagre  and 
uninteresting  compared  to  them." 

Professor  E.  B.  Tylor,3  who  has  noted  some  of  the  refer- 
ences I  have  just  given,  says,  it  is  evident  that  the  Dyaks 
and  Maories  did  not  learn  it  from  Europeans,  and  though 
cat's  cradle  is  now  known  over  all  Western  Europe  we  can- 
not find  any  record  of  it  at  all  ancient  in  our  part  of  the 
world.  It  is  known  in  South-east  Asia,  and  he  thinks  that 
the  most  plausible  explanation  seems  to  be  that  this  is  its 
centre  of  origin,  whence  it  migrated  westward  into  Europe, 
and  eastward  and  southward  through  Polynesia  and  into 
Australia.     It  would  be  interesting    if  it    could  be  estab- 

1  A.  C.  Haddon,  "The  Ethnography  of  the  Western  Tribe  of  Torres 
Straits,"  Jonrn.  Anth.  Inst.,  xix.,  1890,  p.  361. 

1  Central  Australia,  ii.,  p.  229. 

3  E.  B.  Tylor,  "  Remarks  on  the  Geographical  Distribution  of  Games," 
Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  ix.,  1879,  p.  26. 


1 84  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

lished  that  this  game  has  travelled  in  the  manner  suggested 
by  the  great  Oxford  anthropologist.  The  occurrence  of  a 
similar  string  game  among  the  Eskimo  requires  explanation. 

We  know  that  all  over  the  world,  string,  cords,  and  knots 
enter  largely  into  magic,  and  there  may  be  some  forgotten 
or  unrecorded  connection  between  cat's  cradle  and  a  magical 
rite.  The  association  of  cat's  cradle  with  mythology  in  New 
Zealand  is  also  worth  bearing  in  mind. 

At  present  we  cannot  carry  the  investigation  any  further 
until  more  evidence  is  to  hand.  It  does  not  appear  to  me 
improbable  that  some  of  these  varieties  of  cat's  cradle  may 
have  been  independently  invented. 

KITES. 

Although  now  fairly  widely  distributed  in  Europe  and 
common  enough  in  England,  the  kite  is  a  comparatively 
recent  plaything  in  Europe,  having  been  introduced  in  the 
course  of  Oriental  trade  from  the  far  East  during  the  seven- 
teenth century.  Strutt,  writing  in  1801,  says  he  does  not 
find  "  any  reason  to  conclude  that  it  existed  here  much 
more  than  a  century  back,"  '  and  the  first  record  he  found 
was  in  a  French  and  English  dictionary,  published  by 
Miege,  A.D.  1690,  where  among  other  significations  cerf 
volant  denoted  a  "  kite." 

Such  being  the  case  it  is  evident  there  cannot  be  much  to 
learn  from  a  study  of  kites  in  Europe,  nor  have  we  a  great 
variety  in  forms.  The  old  type  with  a  crescentic  upper 
margin  is  giving  place  to  a  diamond-  or  lozenge-shaped 
form.  Occasionally  one  sees  other  shapes,  but  these  are 
obviously  importations,  or  imitations,  of  Chinese  or  Japanese 
kites. 

1  J.  Strutt,  The  Sports  and  Pastimes  of  the  People  of  England^  1801,  Book 
iv.,  p.  292. 


KITES  185 

From  being  a  mere  toy  the  kite  has  recently  become  a 
scientific  instrument.  Kites  appear  to  have  been  first  ap- 
plied in  meteorology  by  Alexander  Wilson,  of  Glasgow, 
who,  in  1749,  raised  thermometers  attached  to  kites  into  the 
clouds.1  Three  years  later,  Franklin  performed  in  Philadel- 
phia his  celebrated  experiment  of  collecting  the  electricity 
of  the  thunder-cloud  by  means  of  a  kite.8  Although  kites 
have  served  a  variety  of  purposes,  their  first  systematic  use 
in  meteorology  was  probably  in  England,  between  1883  and 
1885,  when  E.  D.  Archibald  made  differential  measurements 
of  wind  velocity  by  anemometers,  raised  by  kites  fifteen 
hundred  feet  {Nature,  vol.  xxxi.).  In  1885,  A.  McAdie  re- 
peated Franklin's  experiment  on  Blue  Hill,  using  an  elec- 
trometer. Since  then  there  has  been  a  very  notable 
development  in  scientific  kite-flying  in  the  United  States ; 
in  Europe,  attention  has  chiefly  been  directed  to  balloons, 
though  the  latter  have  many  disadvantages  as  compared 
with  the  former.  A  kite-balloon  is  now  being  tried  in  the 
German  army,  but  it  is  inferior  to  the  simple  kite  for  meteor- 
ological researches.3 

"  In  Washington  the  Weather  Bureau  has,  under  the  direction 
of  Prof.  Willis  L.  Moore,  chief  of  the  Bureau,  been  carrying  on 
an  extended  investigation  into  the  best  kinds  of  kites  for  use  in 
sending  up  meteorological  instruments.  Prof.  C.  F.  Marvin  has 
recently  minutely  described  the  kind  of  kite  now  in  use  by  the 
Bureau.4  This  kite  is  a  modification  of  those  used  by  Hargrave 
in  Australia,  and  is  not  at  all  like  the  ordinary  kite.  Instead  of 
being  flat,  and  tapering  at  the  lower  end,  as  in  the  usual  form, 

1  Trans.  Roy.  Soc.  Edinburgh,  x.,  p.  284. 

2  Sparks,    Works  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  v.,  p.  295. 

3  Lawrence  Rotch,  "  On  obtaining  Meteorological  Records  in  the  Upper  Air, 
by  Means  of  Kites  and  Balloons,"  Proc.  American  Acad.  Arts  and  Sci.,  xxxii., 
1897  ;  reprinted  in  Xature,  lvi.,  1897,  p.  602. 

4  Monthly  Weather  Rev..   Nov.    1895 


1 86  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

these  kites  are  box-shaped,  with  their  ends  open  and  their  sides 
partly  covered  with  cloth  or  silk.  This  style  of  kite,  which  has 
also  been  in  use  at  Blue  Hill  for  some  months,  is  found  to  be 
admirably  adapted  to  the  purpose  for  which  it  is  intended,  and 
when  fine  piano  wire  is  used  to  hold  it,  instead  of  twine,  is  a 
splendid  flyer. 

"  Clayton,  of  the  Blue  Hill  Observatory,  has  for  some  time 
been  using  kites  to  help  in  determining  the  altitudes  of  the  base 
of  stratus  and  nimbus.  These  clouds,  which  so  often  cover  the 
whole  sky  with  a  uniform  sheet,  can  only  have  their  heights  de- 
termined under  the  most  favourable  circumstances  if  the  ordinary 
theodolite  is  used. 

"  The  work  done  at  Blue  Hill  Observatory  with  kites  was  out- 
lined by  Clayton  before  the  Boston  Scientific  Society  at  a  recent 
meeting.1  The  kites  at  present  in  use  are  the  Eddy,  or  tailless, 
and  the  Hargrave,  or  box-kite.  Continued  experiments  at  Blue 
Hill  have  resulted  in  the  development  of  scientific  kite-flying  on 
a  remarkable  scale.  Recent  ascents  have  reached  altitudes  but 
little  short  of  a  mile  above  sea  level;  and  excellent  records  have 
been  obtained  by  means  of  a  self-recording  instrument  which 
gives  automatic  readings  of  temperature,  pressure,  humidity,  and 
wind  velocity.  The  meteorological  results  already  obtained  are 
of  great  value,  and  the  full  discussion  of  them  is  awaited  with 
interest.  Among  the  most  important  matters  that  have  been 
noted  is  the  presence  of  cold  waves  and  warm  waves  at  consider- 
able elevations  some  hours  before  the  temperature  changes  are 
noted  at  the  earth's  surface.  The  prospect  of  improving  our 
weather  forecasts  by  such  soundings  of  the  free  air  is  very  en- 
couraging, and  it  is  more  than  likely  that  before  long  some  prac- 
tical use  will  be  made  of  these  discoveries. 

"  The  next  few  years  will  undoubtedly  witness  many  improve- 
ments in  kites  used  for  meteorological  purposes,  and  the  United 
States  seems  to  be  distinctly  in  the  lead  in  this  work  at  the  pres- 
ent time."  * 

1  Boston  Commomuealth,  May  9,  1896,  12-13. 

2  R.  De  C.  Ward,   Science  (N.S.),  iii.,  1896,  p.  801. 


KITES  187 

True  to  the  tradition  of  thousands  of  years,  the  ingenuity 
of  Europe  is  concerned  in  an  endeavour  to  increase  her 
machinery  for  war.  It  is  extremely  difficult  for  an  expert 
marksman  to  hit  even  a  captive  balloon,  and  it  is  doubtful 
whether  our  newest  field-gun  would  be  of  much  service  in 
this  respect,  but  a  kite  would  be  much  more  difficult  to  hit. 
Therefore  it  really  does  become  of  some  interest  to  know 
whether  an  enemy  can  by  means  of  a  parcel  of  kites  take 
photographs  of  our  defences,  and  by  the  same  method  deto- 
nate over  our  cities  several  dozen  pounds  of  nitro-glycerine. 

Captain,  Baden-Powell,  of  the  Scots  Guards,  is  our  great 
authority  on  kites  in  England.  He  makes  these  toys  of  our 
childhood  on  such  a  scale  that  they  can,  with  a  good  wind, 
carry  up  a  staff-officer.  He  is  understood  to  laugh  at  bal- 
loons as  a  means  of  observing  a  foe,  and  to  claim  that, 
whereas  balloons  must  be  a  failure  when  the  wind  is  strong, 
kites  will  do  nearly  all  their  work  in  a  gale  or  half  a  gale. 

The  use  of  kites  for  scientific  purposes  is  obvious  enough. 
By  their  aid  real  bird's-eye  views  may  be  taken  with  a 
camera  flying  aloft,  the  shutter  being  actuated  by  mechani- 
cal means  or  preferably  by  electricity.  Mr.  Woglom  '  gives 
us  some  specimens  of  views  of  New  York  City  taken  from 
the  neighbourhood  of  Washington  Square.  We  do  not 
know  that  they  show  us  much  more  than  could  be  had  from 
the  roofs  of  some  of  the  monster  buildings  which  the  strait- 
ness  of  New  York  necessitates,  and  which  are  unhappily  not 
unknown  now  in  London.  But  they  at  least  prove  the  pos- 
sibility, which  the  ordinary  man  might  well  have  doubted, 
of  manipulating  a  camera  attached  to  a  kite.  If  that  can  be 
done  at  two  hundred  feet  from  the  ground  while  the  kite  is 
in  the  air,  it  can  obviously  be  done  at  two  thousand  feet. 

1  Gilbert  Totten  Woglom,  Para  kites  :  A  Treatise  on  the  Making  and  Flying 
of  Tailless  Kites  for  Scientific  Purposes  and  for  Recreation  (G.  P.  Putnam's 
Sons.   1S96). 


1 88  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  The  form  of  kite  from  which  the  '  parakite  '  is  an  evolution 
is  the  general  form  of  the  Asiatic  kite,  substantially  a  square, 
whereof  the  two  diagonals  are  respectively  horizontal  and  verti- 
cal with  a  convex  windward  side,  the  convexity  produced  by  a 
third  transverse  member  which  is  curved  upward  as  well  as  to  the 
windward  face.  The  Woglom  parakite  flies  without  a  tail,  and 
will  not  fly  properly  with  one."  l 

With  all  our  vaunted  progress  and  science  we  have  not  so 
very  much  to  pride  ourselves  upon  even  in  this  latest  de- 
velopment of  military  tactics;  for  we  are,  after  all,  only 
following  in  the  footsteps  of  the  Chinese  and  Japanese. 

Kites  are  said  to  have  been  invented  by  the  Chinese  Gen- 
eral, Han-Sin,  about  200  B.C.  He  flew  in  the  air  figures  of 
different  forms  and  colours,  and  thus  signalled  from  a  be- 
sieged town  to  the  army  that  was  coming  to  his  succour.3 

In  a  war  with  Japan,  some  four  hundred  years  ago,  a 
Korean  general  encouraged  his  dispirited  soldiers,  who  were 
discouraged  by  the  appearance  of  falling  stars,  by  secretly 
making  a  kite,  to  which  he  attached  a  small  lantern,  and  one 
dark  night  he  sent  it  up.  The  soldiers  accepted  this  as  an 
auspicious  omen,  and  renewed  the  struggle  with  increased 
energy. 

Another  general  flew  a  kite  across  an  impassable  stream ; 
it  lodged  in  a  tree  on  the  other  side,  and  by  its  means  he 
pulled  a  strong  cord^cross  and  ultimately  made  a  bridge. 

Ui  Shosetsu,  the  Japanese  who  tried  to  upset  the  Tok- 
ugawa  government  in  the  seventeenth  century,  made  a  large 
kite,  to  which  he  fastened  himself,  and,  being  carried  up 
into  the  air,  he  was  enabled  to  overlook  the  castle  of  Yedo. 

A  famous  Japanese  robber,  Ishikawa  Goemon,  in  the  six- 
teenth century,  attempted  by  mounting  on  a  kite  to  steal 
the  two  celebrated  solid  golden  fish,  which,  as  finials, 
adorned  two  spires  of  the  great  castle  of  Nagoya.     The  fish 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  16.  2  F.  Dillaye,  Les  Jeux  de  la  Jeunesse,  1885,  p.  34. 


KITES 


189 


were  worth  the  risk,  as  they  were  valued  at  from  £15,000  to 
£16,000,  but  the  daring  thief  failed  in  his  purpose. 


Fig.  36. 
"  Oriental  Kites. 
1.  A  Korean  kite,  with  "crow's  feet."     2.  A  Chinese  kite.     3.    "Cuttlefish"  kite 
from  a  Japanese  drawing  (1-3  after  Culin).      4.  Kite  from  the  Solomon   Islands 
(from  a  specimen  in  the  British  Museum). 


1 90  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

It  is  to  the  same  end  of  Asia  that  we  must  turn  if  we 
wish  to  study  kites  from  an  anthropological  point  of  view, 
and  there  we  shall  find  them  in  profusion,  of  quaint  and 
varied  form,  brilliant  in  colour,  and  in  addition  we  find  them 
put  to  diverse  uses  and  imbued  with  symbolic  significance. 

Nor  are  the  times  and  seasons  for  kite-flying  unimportant. 
With  us  kites  may  be  flown  all  the  year  round,  provided 
there  is  wind  enough;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  spring  is  the 
more  usual  season  for  the  sport.  In  the  far  East  we  find 
that  definite  times  are  appointed  for  this  exercise. 

In  his  learned  book  on  Korean  Gaines,  Mr.  Stewart  Culin 
informs  us  that  the  time  for  kite-flying  in  Korea  is  the  first 
half  of  the  first  month ;  after  this  time  any  one  would  be 
laughed  at  who  flew  a  kite,  nor  will  any  one  touch  a  lost  kite. 
On  the  fourteenth  day  of  the  same  month  it  is  customary  in 
Korea  to  write  on  kites  a  wish  to  the  effect  that  the  year's 
misfortunes  may  be  carried  away  with  them.  A  mother 
does  this  for  a  small  boy,  adding  his  name  and  the  date  of 
his  birth.  The  inscription  is  written  along  the  bamboo 
frame,  so  that  it  may  not  be  readily  seen  by  any  one  who 
might  be  tempted  to  pick  up  the  kite.  The  boys  tie  a  piece 
of  sulphur  paper  on  the  string  of  such  a  kite,  which  they 
light  before  sending  up,  so  that  when  the  kite  is  in  the  air 
the  string  will  be  burnt  through  and  the  kite  itself  blown 
away. 
•    It  is  evident  that  the  kite  is,  in  this  instance,  treated  as  a 

scapegoat,"  the  goat  of  the  Hebrews  being  replaced  by  a 
bird.  In  Japan,  kites  are  called  "  octopus,"  "  paper-hawk," 
"  paper-owl,"  etc.;  and  in  Korea  the  rectangular  kites  are 
provided  at  each  of  the  lower  angles  with  triangular  pieces 
of  white  paper  called  the  "  crow's  foot,"  and  near  the  upper 
border  is  a  disc  of  coloured  paper,  which  probably  is  the 
vestige  of  an  antecedent  bird's  face  (Fig.  36,  No.  1).  All 
classes  fly  kites,  from  the  king  downwards.     Women  some- 


KITES  191 

times  fly  kites  from  their  yards,  but  it  is  said  that  any  one 
can  tell  when  a  kite  is  flown  by  a  woman. 

In  Japan  the  season  for  kite-flying  greatly  varies;  in  gen- 
eral it  appears  to  depend  upon  the  prevailing  winds.  At 
Tokyo  it  begins  on  the  first  day  of  the  New  Year,  and  kites 
are  never  flown  at  any  other  season.  On  the  other  hand, 
at  Nagasaki,  kites  are  not  flown  in  the  first  month,  but  the 
festivals  for  kite-flying  are  the  3d,  10th,  15th,  and  25th  of 
the  third  month,  the  3d  being  the  occasion  of  a  "  religious 
festival  of  dolls"  (literally  of  "chickens,"  or  "young 
birds"). 

On  the  5th  of  the  fifth  month  is  the  boys'  festival. 
Streamers  and  small  flags  are  displayed,  and  a  large  coloured 
carp  of  cloth  or  paper.  This  fish  is  respected,  as  it  reso- 
lutely overcomes  all  the  difficulties  it  encounters  in  its  pass- 
age up  the  streams  of  the  country,  even  ascending  waterfalls ; 
thus  it  is  emblematic  of  what  it  is  hoped  will  be  the  career 
of  the  boys.  Models  of  helmets  and  warriors  are  also  ex- 
hibited as  expressions  of  the  hope  that  boys  may  become 
great  men.  There  is  a  distinct  association  of  ideas  between 
long  flags  and  kites.  The  same  day  in  other  parts  of  Japan 
is  an  especial  occasion  for  kite-flying.  In  the  province  of 
Suruga  all  the  boys  who  can  afford  it  have  a  kite  on  this 
day.  It  is  considered  very  unlucky  for  a  boy  to  lose  his 
kite ;  should  this  happen,  it  is  customary  for  search  parties 
to  follow  the  lost  kite  even  for  a  distance  of  twenty  miles, 
and  those  who  bring  it  back  are  rewarded  with  presents  of 
sake.  It  is  recorded  that  a  boy  once  lost  his  kite  on  the 
day  of  this  feast,  and  a  few  months  later  he  died.  Girls 
never  have  kites.  In  this  case  it  appears  that  the  kite  is 
regarded  asa"  life-token,"  or  "  external  soul,"  of  the  boy. 
But  this  symbolism  is  limited  to  certain  occasions  and 
places.  In  Nagasaki,  when  a  kite  escapes,  no  special  effort 
is  made  to  recover  it. 


192  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

The  middle  and  upper  classes  in  China  indulge  in  the 
pastime  in  a  desultory  way ;  it  is  not  with  them  a  national 
sport,  as  with  the  Japanese  and  with  the  natives  of  the 
countries  south  of  China.1  The  Koreans  say  that  the  Chinese 
do  not  know  how  to  fly  kites,  and  that  when  a  Chinaman 
grows  tired  he  will  tie  the  string  on  to  a  tree  and  lie  down 
and  watch  it.2 

In  Hong-Kong  the  kite-flying  season  is  the  end  of  sum- 
mer; but  in  some  parts  of  China  the  ninth  day  of  the  ninth 
month  has  been  from  ancient  times  the  great  kite-flying 
festival,  when  paper  birds  and  bizarre  monsters  flit,  swoop, 
and  hover  in  multitudes  in  the  bright  sunshine  (Fig.  36, 
No.  2). 

In  the  mountains  of  the  province  of  Canton  kites  are  flown 
in  gangs. 

11  The  flier  dismisses  a  leash  of  three,  united  by  three  lines  of 
a  few  feet  in  length.  At  the  junction  of  the  three  ends  he  at- 
taches a  single  line,  which  is  dismissed  a  few  feet  farther  in  the 
air.  Then  raising  another  separate  leash  of  three — similar  in 
arrangement  to  the  first — he  ties  the  joined  ends  of  the  second 
leash  to  his  main  single  line,  and  dismisses  the  second  trio,  the 
first  trio  being  in  the  air  beyond  and  above  the  second.  He  re- 
peats thg  operation  as  many  times  as  his  stock  of  kites  and  his 
stock  of  patience  will  allow.  He  heedfully  chooses  kites  which 
have  been  proven  sidewise  fliers,  so  that  they  may  not  foul  each 
other;  if  a  fresher  wind  attacks  his  exhibit,  his  painstaking  is 
ineffective;  they  will  whirl  into  a  confusion  of  entanglement 
which  would  exasperate  any  but  a  Chinaman."  3 

To  a  very  large  extent  kite-flying  in  China  and  Japan  is 
now  a  simple  amusement ;  but  this  is  what  one  constantly 
finds  in  the  history   of  ancient  ceremonial  customs.     Mr. 

1  G.  T.  Woglom,  Parakites,  p.  9. 

2  S.  Culin,  Korean  Games,  p.  12. 

3  G.  T.  Woglom,  Parakites,  p.  9. 


KITES  I93 

Woglom  informs  us  that  the  Japanese  have  their  kite-clubs 
with  quite  large  membership  rolls.  One  prominent  club, 
the  Shiyen  Kwai,  holds  assemblies  annually  in  January  for 
consultation  and  to  decide  competitively  upon  new  designs. 
Prizes  for  beauty  of  design  and  decoration,  and  for  perfec- 
tion in  build  and  accuracy  in  flight,  are  competed  for  at  the 
meetings,  which  are  protracted  for  several  days.  The  club 
meetings  are  held  in  Tokyo,  and  the  flights  are  held  in  the 
suburbs. 

The  "  Festival  of  the  Cherry-Bloom  "  is  a  season  for 
national  sport.  Old  men,  up  to  eighty  years  of  age,  after 
their  tiring  efforts  in  raising  their  pets  into  the  heavens,  and 
too  feeble  to  stand  continuously,  are  attended  by  servants 
with  chairs.  When  travelling  through  a  sparsely  inhabited 
section,  the  rider  will  see  an  ancient,  mummy-like  Japanese 
sitting  by  the  roadside,  perhaps  upon  a  bamboo-pole  sup- 
port, contentedly  flying  and  watching  his  kite  hour  after 
hour.  Nowadays  in  Japan,  the  kite-flying  by  both  adults 
and  children  is  practised  outside  the  cities ;  the  police  regu- 
lations forbid  it  in  the  narrow  city  streets. 

One  exciting  form  of  the  sport  is  known  as  kite-fighting. 
The  strings,  for  a  portion  of  their  length,  are  covered  with 
powdered  glass,  or  sharp-edged,  curved  pieces  of  glass  are 
fastened  to  the  tails  of  the  kites,  the  object  being  to  cut  the 
string  of  an  opponent's  kite  by  a  sawing  motion  of  the 
string  of  your  own  kite  whilst  both  are  flying.  It  has  been 
stated  that  kite-cutting  did  not  originate  in  China,  but  that 
it  was  brought  from  India.  A  description  of  this  skilful 
pastime  is  given  by  Woglom  in  Parakites.1 

In  Siam  each  mandarin  has  his  special  form  of  kite  with  a 
distinctive  colour.  The  king,  also,  is  said  to  have  a  mag- 
nificently decorated  kite,  which  is  flown  at  sunset  and  kept 
flying  all  night  by  mandarins  of  the  first  rank.     It  is  with- 

1  Pp.  6,  8,  9. 


194  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

drawn  at  sunrise.1  Here  again  there  must  be  a  symbolic  or 
magical  significance  for  this  curious  custom. 

Not  only  in  Further  India,  but  in  India  itself,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  in  the  Malay  region  to  the  south,  is  kite-flying 
practised.  It  is  very  prevalent  in  Java.  The  several  Jav- 
anese communities  have  each  their  peculiar  kinds  of  kites, 
and  they  hold  contests  to  prove  superiority  of  manufacture 
or  skill  in  manipulation.  The  old  form  of  English  kite  was 
a  Javanese  pattern.  Woglom  says  that  the  Javanese  kites 
are  seldom  decorated,  except  with  dirt.  The  Javanese, 
more  generally  than  the  Japanese,  gamble  on  the  results  of 
kite  competitions  and  kite  battles.  They  fly  them  to  heights 
of  700  to  1200  feet  for  display. 

Dr.  Codrington  2  informs  us  that  in  Melanesia  kites  are 
used  as  toys  in  the  Banks  Islands,  and  in  the  New  Hebrides 
they  are  made  and  flown  at  the  season  when  the  gardens  are 
being  cleared  for  planting.  The  kite  is  steadied  by  a  long 
reed  tail,  and  a  good  one  will  fly  and  hover  very  well. 

In  Lepers'  Island  the  kite  is  called  an  "  eagle,"  and  the 
following  song  is  sung  when  flying  one: 

"  Wind!  wherever  you  may  abide, 
Wherever  you  may  abide,  Wind!  come  hither; 
Pray  take  my  eagle  away  from  me  afar. 
E-u!  E-u!  Wind!  blow  strong  and  steady, 
Blow  and  come  forth,  O  Wind!  " 

But  the  kite  is  put  to  a  more  utilitarian  use  in  the  Solomon 
Islands  and  Santa  Cruz,3  Here  it  is  flown  from  a  canoe,  and 
from  it  hangs  a  tangle  of  spiders'  web  or  of  fibre,  which  it 
drags  along  the  surface  of  the  water  and  in  which  fish  with 
long  slender  under-jaws  become  entangled  (Fig.  36,  No.  4). 

1  F.  Dillaye,  Les  Jeux  de  la  Jeunesse,  1885,  p.  39. 

2  R.  H.  Codrington,  The  Melanesians :  Studies  in  their  Anthropology  and 
Folk-Lore,  1891,  pp.  342,  336.  3  Loc .  cil.,  p.  318. 


KITES  I95 

The  Fijians  know  of  the  kite  by  the  Polynesian  name  of 
ManumanUy  "  bird,"  but  apparently  they  do  not  fly  it.1 

The  use  of  the  kite  was  widely  spread  in  Polynesia,  being 
recorded  from  the  Society  Islands  and  as  far  south  as  New 
Zealand.  Ellis  states :  ' '  The  boys  were  very  fond  of  the  uoy 
or  kite,  which  they  raised  to  a  great  height.  The  Tahitian 
kite  was  different  in  shape  from  the  kites  of  the  English 
boys.  It  was  made  of  light  native  cloth  instead  of  paper, 
and  formed  in  shape  according  to  the  fancy  of  its  owner."  a 

In  New  Zealand 

"  the  name  of  the  kite  is  the  old  term  for  the  hawk.  Their  figure 
is  generally  a  rough  imitation  of  the  bird  with  its  great  out-spread 
wings;  these  kites  are  frequently  made  of  very  large  dimensions 
of  raupo  leaves,  a  kind  of  sedge,  neatly  sewn  together  and  kept 
in  shape  by  a  slight  framework.  The  string  is  most  expeditiously 
formed  and  lengthened  at  pleasure,  being  merely  the  split  leaves 
of  the  flax  plant  [Phormium  tenax].  This  is  a  very  favourite 
amusement."  3 

Dieffenbach  says:  "  The  kite  is  of  triangular  form,  and  is 
very  neatly  made  of  the  light  leaves  of  a  sedge ;  its  ascent  is 
accompanied  with  some  saying  or  song,  such  as  the  He 
karakia  pakau.  It  is  a  sign  of  peace  when  it  is  seen  flying 
near  a  village."  4  Dieffenbach  gives  the  words  of  this  song, 
but  unfortunately  it  is  not  translated.  Tregear 5  says  that 
the  kite  kahu  (hawk),  or  pakau  (wing),  is  made  from  the 
leaves  of  the  raupo  (Typha  angustifolia). 

There  were  three  kinds  of  kites  in  the  remote  Hervey  Is- 
lands, which  were  either  egg-shaped,  club-shaped,  or  bird- 

1  Seemann,  Viti,  p.  45. 

2  W.  Ellis,  Polynesian  Researches,  i.,  2d  ed.,  1831,  p.  228. 

3  R.  Taylor,  Te  Ika  a  Maui  ;  or,  New  Zealand  and  its  Inhabitants,  1855, 
p.  172. 

4  E.  Dieffenbach,  Travels  in  New  Zealand,  ii.,  1843,  P«  31- 
6  E.  Tregear,  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xix.,  p.  115. 


I96  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

shaped.  As  the  latter  were  more  difficult  to  make,  they 
were  scarce  and  justly  admired  by  the  childish  old  men  who 
delighted  to  fly  them  on  the  hill-tops  of  Mangaia.  Besides 
a  terminal  bunch  of  feathers,  the  long  tail  of  these  kites  was 
decorated  respectively  with  four,  six,  or  three  bunches  of 
yellow  ti  leaves.  The  four  bunches  of  the  egg-like  kite 
represent  a  constellation  called  the  "  Twins  and  their 
parents"  (Piriereua  ma)>  about  which  an  interesting  myth 
is  given  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Wyatt  Gill.1  The  only  children 
of  Potiki  were  twins,  a  girl  named  Piri-ere-ua,  or  "  Insepar- 
able," and  a  boy.  Their  mother,  Tarakorekore,  was  a  great 
scold  and  gave  them  no  peace.  On  one  occasion  when  their 
mother  would  not  give  them  some  fish  they  ran  away  and 
leaped  up  into  the  sky,  where  they  were  followed  by  their 
parents,  who  continually  chase  but  can  never  overtake  them. 

SONG  OF  THE  TWINS. 

Wherefore  fled  the  children  of  Tarakorekore  ? 

Anger  at  the  cooked  fish  of  Potiki. 

They  stealthily  rose,  and  ran  and  fled  for  ever. 

Alas!  that  a  mother  should  thus  ill-treat  her  children. 
Such  was  not  my  [the  father's]  wish;  and  when  I  intercede, 
She  will  not  relent. 

She  thrashes  them — is  always  at  it. 

If  one  sleeps  at  Karang  or  elsewhere, 

Still  there  is  no  peace — only  threats  and  blows. 

The  six  bunches  denote  the  Pleiades;  this  beautiful  con- 
stellation was  of  extreme  importance  in  heathenism,  as  its 
appearance  at  sunset  on  the  eastern  horizon  determined  the 
commencement  of  the  new  year,  which  is  about  the  middle 
of  December.  Dr.  Gill  gives  3  the  mythical  account  of  the 
origin  of  the  group.     The  three  bunches  represent  "  The 

1  Myths  and  Songs,  p.  40.  2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  43. 


KITES  I97 

Three  "  (Tau-toru),  that  is,  the  three  bright  stars  forming 
Orion's  Belt.  The  tapa  of  which  the  kites  were  made  was 
decorated  with  devices  appropriate  to  the  tribe  of  the  maker. 
A  tail  with  six  bunches  of  leaves  was  about  twenty  fathoms 
(one  hundred  and  twenty  feet)  in  length. 

The  origin  of  kite-flying  is  thus  accounted  for.  The  god 
Tane,  the  Giver  of  food,  once  challenged  his  eldest  brother 
Rongo,  the  Resounder,  whose  home  is  in  the  shades,  to  a 
kite-flying  match.  But  the  issue  of  this  trial  of  skill  was 
the  utter  discomfiture  of  Tane  by  Rongo,  who  had  secretly 
provided  himself  with  an  enormous  quantity  of  string.  This 
contest  is  the  subject  of  a  poem  composed  by  Koroa  about 
1814  a.d.1 

A  KITE  SONG. 

Call  for  the  dance  to  lead  off . 

The  hill-top  Atiu  is  covered  with  kites, 
Pets  of  Raka  who  rules  o'er  the  winds. 
Solo.     Dance  away! 
Go  on!  , 

Chorus.     See,  yon  hill-top  Atiu  covered  with  kites — 
Pets  of  Raka,  god  of  the  winds. 
Solo.     Aye. 
Chorus.     I  am  a  bird  3  of  beautiful  plumage. 

Solo.     Cleave,  then,  the  dark  clouds. 
Chorus.     Take  care  lest  Tautiti  gain  the  day. 
Solo.     Once  Tane  and  Rongo  tried  their  skill, 

With  divine  kites  in  spirit-land. 
Solo.     Who  was  beaten  ? 
Chorus.     Tane;  for  his  string  fell  short. 

Solo.     Two  thousand  fathoms  of  string! 
Chorus.     Yes;   't  was  Rongo's, 

Whose  kite  touched  the  edge  of  the  sky. 

1  Myths  and  Songs,  p.  123.  2  I.e.,  a  kite. 


I98  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Thus  mortals  have  acquired  this  agreeable  pastime,  the 
condition  of  each  game  being  that  the  first  kite  that  mounts 
the  sky  should  be  sacred  to  and  should  bear  the  name  of 
Rongo,  the  divine  patron  of  the  art.  The  names  of  all  sub- 
sequent kites  were  indifferent. 

Children's  kites  were,  and  still  are,  extemporised  out  of 
the  leaves  of  the  gigantic  chestnut  tree.  Sometimes  one 
sees  a  boy — but  it  is  no  longer,  as  in  the  olden  time,  the 
grandfathers — flying  a  properly  made  kite. 

Elsewhere  1  Dr.  Gill  gives  a  Mangaian  legend  about  kites 
which  is  about  three  hundred  and  sixty  years  old,  and  with 
it  "  The  Song  of  the  Twin  Kites." 

Kites  are  said,  as  I  have  previously  mentioned,  to  have 
been  invented  by  the  Chinese  General,  Han-Sin,  about  200 
B.C.  There  is  no  reason  to  disbelieve  that  Han-Sin  em- 
ployed kites  for  the  purpose  stated,  but  the  undoubted 
religious  character  of  kite-flying  in  so  many  places  suggests 
rather  that  this  is  not  at  all  likely  to  have  been  the  origin 
of  the  custom. 

Probably  we  shall  never  know  how  the  kite  first  originated 
— it  may  have  been  independently  invented  in  several  places, 
but  this  is  not  by  any  means  certain.  We  Europeans  cer- 
tainly learnt  the  art  of  kite-flying  from  South  or  Eastern 
Asia.2 

The  divine  origin  of  kites  in  spirit-land,  according  to  the 
ancient  Mangaian  myth,  points  to  its  having  been  an  ances- 
tral custom,  and  as  kite-flying,  accompanied  with  the  singing 
of  mythical  chants,  appears  to  be  widely  spread  in  the 
Pacific,  we  may  safely  regard  the  custom  as  not  having 
various  independent  centres  of  origin  in  Oceania,  but  as 

1  W.  Wyatt  Gill,  From  Darkness  to  Light  in  Polynesia,  with  Illustrative 
Clan  Songs,  London,  1849,  p.  39.  Cf.  also  Life  in  the  Southern  Isles,  by  the 
same  author,  p.  64. 

2  E.  B.  Tylor,  "Remarks  on  the  Geographical  Distribution  of  Games," 
yourn.  Anth.  Inst.,  ix.,  1879,  p.  23. 


KITES  199 

having  been  brought  by  the  Oceanic  peoples  in  their  wan- 
derings from  the  Malay  Archipelago.  Dr.  Gill  believes  that 
the  Polynesians  first  arrived  in  the  Hervey  Islands  some  two 
or  three  hundred  years  ago,  and  that  their  swarming  from 
Savai'i  took  place  some  five  or  six  centuries  ago.1  How  and 
when  their  ancestors  got  to  the  Samoan  group  is  still  very 
problematical.  An  additional  argument  in  favour  of  the 
natives  of  the  Hervey  group  bringing  their  kites  with  them 
is  found  in  the  "  Plan  of  the  Winds"  as  handed  down  by  the 
ancient  priests,  which,  with  slight  variations,  is  known  from 
many  other  of  the  Oceanic  groups.  The  number  of  wind- 
holes  in  this  plan  exactly  corresponds  with  the  points  of  the 
mariner's  compass.  In  the  olden  times  great  stress  was 
laid  on  this  knowledge  for  the  purpose  of  fishing,  and  espe- 
cially for  the  long  sea  voyages  which  these  adventurous 
navigators  undertook  from  group  to  group.  The  Chinese 
are  credited  with  having  invented  the  mariner's  compass 
long  anterior  to  the  Christian  era.  I  should  not  be  surprised 
if,  ultimately,  it  was  found  to  be  the  case  that  the  compass, 
with  certain  other  elements  of  Chinese  culture,  was  brought 
to  that  country  by  a  maritime  people  who  were  early  merged 
into  the  general  population  of  that  mixed  people,  and  who 
have  subsequently  been  forgotten.  It  was  known  to  the 
Arabs  in  mediaeval  times,  and  from  them,  through  the 
crusaders,  the  knowledge  spread  over  Europe.  As  Dr.  Gill 
points  out,2  the  absence  of  iron  throughout  Polynesia  would 
easily  account  for  the  loss  of  the  magnet,  but  the  plan  of 
the  card  was  perpetuated. 

Thus  once  more  our  attention  is  directed  towards  Eastern 
Asia,  not  only  as  the  headquarters,  but  also  as  the  place  of 
origin,  of  the  kite.  It  may  yet  be  shown  that  it  actually 
originated  among  the  Indonesian  stock  before  the  Polyne- 
sians had  swarmed  off  from  the  so-called  Malay  Archipelago 

1  Myths  and  Songs,  p.  167.  2  Ibid.,  p.  319. 


200  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

to  found  new  homes  in  Oceania.  There  are  anthropologists 
who  claim  a  southern  origin  for  the  fine  type  of  the  Japan- 
ese ;  possibly  these  adventurous  and  skilful  seamen,  like  the 
Norsemen  of  Northern  Europe,  may  have  formed  an  aristo- 
cracy among  the  agricultural  and  settled  peoples  of  Japan 
and  Korea,  and  brought  with  them  their  social  organisation 
and  a  higher  culture.  If  this  be  so,  it  is  not  improbable 
that  kite-flying  was  a  religious  exercise  of  these  people,  and 
the  kite  may  have  been  a  symbol  of  the  soul  or  spirit  of  man. 

If  we  grant,  and  there  is  to  my  mind  very  good  reason  for 
so  doing,  that  the  kite  was  a  religious  symbol  of  the  primi- 
tive Indonesian  race,  we  may  fairly  go  one  step  further  and 
suggest  that  the  kite  itself  is  merely  the  liberated  sail  of  a 
canoe.  Amongst  a  seafaring  folk  this  accident  must  often 
arise,  and  the  excitement  of  hauling  down  a  sail  that  had 
blown  away  might  very  well  lead  to  the  process  being  in- 
tentionally repeated  on  a  small  scale. 

It  is  tempting  to  imagine  that  as  the  sails  of  a  canoe  are 
virtually  the  life  of  a  canoe — that  is,  the  source  of  its  move- 
ment, the  loss  of  which  leaves  behind  it  an  inert  log  at  the 
mercy  of  the  elements — so  the  kite  by  analogy  may  have 
come  to  be  regarded  as  the  ' '  external  soul  "  or  * '  life-token 
of  the  owner.  For  an  elucidation  of  the  remarkable  belief 
that  the  soul  can  be  located  in  an  extraneous  object  far 
removed  from  the  body,  the  reader  is  referred  to  the  con- 
cluding part  of  Dr.  Frazer's  monumental  work,  The  Golden 
Bough.1  Mr.  Hartland,  in  his  great  study  of  the  Legend  of 
Perseus,  deals  fully  with  the  life-token;  he  is  of  opinion  that 
we  are  "  justified  in  treating  the  life-token  and  the  external 
soul  as  almost  always  one  and  the  same  thing  in  belief  and 
custom  "  (p.  30). 2     Granting  the  truth  of  the  statement  that 

1  J.  G.  Frazer,  The  Golden  Bough,  a  Study  in  Comparative  Religion,  1890, 
ii.,  p.  296. 

2  E.  Sidney  Hartland,  The  Legend  of  Perseus,  a  Study  of  Tradition  in  Story, 
Custom,  and  Belief ,  1895,  ii.,  pp.  1-54. 


KITES  201 

the  King  of  Siam's  kite  is  flown  at  night  by  a  trusted  man- 
darin, the  fact  would  bear  the  interpretation  that  during  the 
hours  of  darkness  and  danger  the  royal  soul  was  peacefully 
soaring  in  the  calm  heavens,  far  removed  from  mundane 
risks. 

Problems  such  as  these,  which  are  suggested  by  the  com- 
parative study  of  toys,  havejn  themselves  those  very  dangers 
which  beset  the  kites  themselves.  The  string  which  binds 
them  to  the  solid  earth  may  snap,  and  they  may  be  lost  in 
the  clouds,  or  they  may  fall,  as  it  were,  lifeless  to  the  ground. 


CHAPTER  IX 

TOYS  AND  GAMES:   TOPS  AND  THE  TUG-OF-WAR 

TOPS 

WE  have  seen  that  the  kite  has  been  introduced  into 
Europe  from  Eastern  Asia,  but  Schlegel  believes 
that  the  debt  has  not  been  all  on  one  side,  as,  according  to 
him,  the  West  has  repaid  in  the  top  its  debt  to  the  East  for 
the  kite. 

There  are  many  kinds  of  tops,  but  they  can  be  resolved 
into  a  few  groups:  the  whipping-top;  the  top  turned  by  a 
string  wound  round  the  upper  end  as  in  the  humming-top, 
in  which  case  there  is  usually  a  detachable  handle,  or  by  the 
string  enwrapping  the  lower  end  as  in  the  usual  peg-tops ; 
and  lastly  the  top,  or  teetotum,  spun  by  being  twisted  by 
the  hands  or  fingers. 

Every  spring,  tops  appear  in  our  streets  with  the  regularity 
of  the  seasonal  revivals  of  Dame  Nature  herself. 

"  Tops  are  in,  spin  'em  agin; 
Tops  are  out,  smuggin'  about," 

cried  the  ragamuffins  in  Hone's  time,1  and  so  they  still  do. 
The  last  phrase  has  reference  to  an  unwritten  code  of  boy- 
life,  that  confiscation  ("  smugging")  of  tops  is  allowable 
when  they  are  "  out." 

1  W.  Hone,  The  Every-Day  Book,  i.,  1824  (February  15),  p.  253. 

202 


TOPS  203 

Nares  l  has  collected  several  references  which  show  that 
tops  were  at  one  time  owned  by  the  parish  or  town.  In 
Twelfth  Night2  we  read :  "  He  's  a  coward  and  coystril,  that 
will  not  drink  to  my  niece,  till  his  brains  turn  o'  the  toe  like 
the  parish  top." 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher  refer  more  than  once  to  this 
strange  civic  toy. 

"  I  '11  hazard 
My  life  upon  it,  that  a  boy  of  twelve 
Should  scourge  him  hither  like  a  parish  top, 
And  make  him  dance  before  you."  3 

"  And  dances  like  a  town-top,  and  reels  and  hobbles."  4 

Sir  W.  Blackstone  asserts,  also,  that  to  "  sleep  like  a  town- 
top  ' '  was  proverbial.  Stevens,  in  his  Notes  on  Shakespeare, 
states  that  "  this  is  one  of  the  customs  now  laid  aside:  a 
large  top  was  formerly  kept  in  every  village,  to  be  whipt  in 
frosty  weather,  that  the  peasants  might  be  kept  warm  by 
exercise  and  out  of  mischief  while  they  could  not  work. ' '  It 
is  very  improbable  that  this  is  the  real  signification  of  the 
curious  custom  of  having  a  village  top.  Judging  from  what 
we  know  of  other  instances  of  village  recreations,  it  is  prob- 
able that  there  is  something  behind  this  which  has  not  yet 
been  elucidated. 

Hone  6  refers  to  a  top  being  used  in  the  ritual  of  the  burial 
of  Alleluia  in  one  of  the  churches  in  Paris.  "According  to 
a  story  (whether  true  or  false)  in  one  of  the  churches  of 
Paris,  a  choir  boy  used  to  whip  a  top  marked  with  Alleluia, 
written  in  gold  letters,  from  one  end  of  the  choir  to  the  other. 

1  R.  Nares,  Glossary,  "  Parish  Top." 

5  Shakespeare,   Twelfth  Night,  Act  i.,  Scene  3. 

3  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,   Thierry  and  Theod. ,  Act  ii. ,  Scene  4. 

4  Ibid.,  Night  Walker,  Act  i.,  Scene  4. 

5  W.  Hone,  The  Every-Day  Book,  i.,  1824  (February  2),  p.  199. 


204  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

This  does  not  seem  to  be  very  likely,  but  strange  customs 
often  persist  to  an  unexpected  and  almost  inexplicable 
extent,  and,  if  it  be  true,  we  may  find  in  this  and  analogous 
customs  some  clues  which  may  throw  light  upon  the  town 
tops. 

The  whipping-top  has  an  ancient  pedigree  in  Europe.  In 
a  work  of  the  thirteenth  century,  Le  Miracle  de  Sainct-Loysy 
the  whipping-top  {sabot)  is  mentioned  J ;  and  it  is  figured  in 
the  marginal  paintings  of  English  MSS.  of  the  fourteenth 
century.2 

Pliny  refers  to  a  top  identical  with  the  modern  one,  and 
specimens  of  such  tops  have  been  recovered  from  the  ruins 
of  Pompeii,  and  are  still  exhibited  in  the  Museum  of  Naples. 
There  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  several  allusions  in  Latin  and 
Greek  authors  to  the  whipping-top.  The  whipping-top  is 
mentioned  in  an  old  MS.  dating  to  about  500  B.C.  A 
stranger  of  Atarne  consulted  Pittacus  of  Mitylene,  one  of 
the  Seven  Sages  of  Greece  (651-569  B.C.),  concerning  a 
wife.  The  question  was  whether  he  should  take  a  certain 
girl  in  his  own  rank  of  life,  who  had  a  fortune  equal  to  his 
own,  or  a  damsel  of  higher  status  and  with  more  money. 
The  sage  told  him  to  go  to  a  group  of  boys  who  were  play- 
ing at  whipping-tops  in  the  midst  of  a  wide  cross-road.  As 
he  approached  them  he  heard  one  of  the  boys  say  to  his 
fellow,  "  Whip  the  nearest  one,"  and  he  accepted  this  as 
an  oracle. 

The  oldest  record  is  the  discovery  of  Dr.  Schliemann  of 
terra-cotta  tops  in  the  so-called  Third  City  of  Troy,  and  at 
the  present  day  the  boys  of  Asia  Minor  still  spin  tops  with 
whips. 

When  the  traveller,  Palgrave,  was  at  Riadh,  the  capital 

1  F.  Dillaye,  Les  Jeux  de  la  Jeunesse,  Paris,  1885,  p.  191. 
8  J.  Strutt,   The  Sports  and  Pastimes  of  the  People  of  England,   1801,  book 
iv.,  chap.  iv. ,  p.  288. 


TOPS  205 

of  Wahabees  in  Central  Arabia,  he  saw  a  boy  spin  a  top  on 
his  left  hand;  he  then  took  it  on  the  forefinger  of  his  right 
hand,  which  he  held  at  full  length  above  his  head,  and  re- 
peated the  following  formula : 

"  Not  by  my  strength,  nor  cleverness,  but  by  the  strength  of 
God  and  by  the  cleverness  of  God." 

The  whipping-top  is  known  in  the  far  East.  Stewart 
Culin  '  in  his  beautifully  illustrated  work  on  Korean  Games 
gives  a  plate  of  a  couple  of  boys  playing  on  the  ice.  The 
top  is  made  of  hard  wood  with  an  iron  point ;  it  is  played 
with  in  winter,  and  usually  spun  on  the  frozen  ground.  The 
Koreans  also  share  the  humming-top  with  the  Japanese, 
who  call  it  "  thunder-top." 

The  learned  Chinese  scholar,  Gustav  von  Schlegel,  of 
Leiden,  many  years  ago2  also  distinguished  between  the 
various  kinds  of  tops  of  Eastern  Asia;  the  ordinary  small 
top,  driven  with  the  whip  {Tanzknopfle ,  i.  e.f  "  dance- 
button,"  is  its  name  on  the  Neckar),  the  humming-top, 
the  whistling-top  which  is  thrown,  and  the  top  turned  round 
with  the  fingers,  etc.  The  first  of  these,  according  to 
Schlegel,  spread  from  Europe  through  Java  to  Japan  and 
Korea.  Schlegel  never  saw  it  in  China,  nor  is  it  mentioned 
in  the  older  Chinese  works. 

The  Japanese,  according  to  Dr.  R.  Andree  in  an  erudite 
paper  on  "  The  Game  of  Tops  and  its  Distribution  "  3  in  a 
recent  number  of  Globus,  call  the  different  sorts  of  top  tok- 
lok.  This  word  is  not  known  in  China,  and  in  the  old  Jap- 
anese encyclopaedias  the  name  is  tolo,  which  is  the  Dutch 

1  Stewart  Culin,  Korean  Games  :  with  Notes  on  the  Corresponding  Games  of 
China  and  Japan,  Philadelphia,  1895. 

2  Chinesiche  Brauche  und  Spiele  in  Europa,  Dissertation,  Jena,  1869. 

3  R.  Andree,  "Das  Kreiselspielen  und  seine  Verbreitung,"  Globus,  lxix., 
1896,  p.  371. 


206  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

tol  which,  together  with  its  name,  was  introduced,  says 
Schlegel,  into  Japan  from  Java.  The  Korean  and  Japanese 
humming-top  corresponds  exactly  with  that  used  in  Java, 
and  they  are  all  made  of  bamboo.  Culin  figures  a  large 
number  of  Japanese  tops  of  various  kinds,  many  of  which 
are  very  ingenious. 

From  Japan  this  top  passed  across  to  China,  where  in 
Amoy  it  is  called  kan-lok,  which  has  the  same  signification 
as  the  Japanese  tolo.  The  large  humming-top  is  called  in 
Amoy  "  earth-thunder,"  and  in  Canton  "  noisy  goose." 
Thus  the  Bromtoloi  the  Netherlands  (the  tonpie  bourdonnante 
of  the  French)  has  also  wandered  afar. 

According  to  Bastian  '  the  game  of  top  is  known  in  Bur- 
mah  and  Siam.  Different  kinds  of  tops  are  found  in  Malasia. 
The  true  humming-top  and  the  whipping-top  occur  in  the 
Malay  Peninsula  and  Archipelago.  A  humming-top  from 
the  Straits  Settlements  in  the  British  Museum  is  made  of  a 
section  of  bamboo,  with  an  oblong  opening  in  the  side. 
Mr.  C.  H.  Read  also  describes  a  Malay  top  {gasing)  made 
in  a  lathe,  and  furnished  with  an  iron  peg  at  the  base.  It 
differs  from  the  European  top  in  having  the  string  wound 
round  the  upper  part.  It  was  obtained  at  Selangor,  Straits 
Settlements  (Fig.  37,  No.  6). 

Riedel2  found  tops  among  the  Uliassern,  Serang,  Kaisar, 
and  Wetar.  A  simple  wooden  top  driven  by  a  whip  was 
found  by  Dr.  Max  Weber  3  in  the  Island  of  Flores,  and  a 
spinning-top  was  collected  by  Dr.  H.  O.  Forbes  in  Timor- 
laut.     C.    H.   Read,4  who  has  described  this  (Fig.  37,  No. 

1  Bastian,  Reise  in  Birma,  p.  60 ;  Reise  in  Siam,  p.  324. 

2  Riedel,  Sluiken  kroeshaarige  Rassen,  pp.  84,  131,  428,  433. 

3  Max  Weber,  Ethnographische  Notizen  iiber  Flores  und  Celebes,  Leiden„ 
1890,  pi.  v.,  fig.  12. 

4  C.  H.  Read,  "Stone  Spinning-Tops  from  Torres  Straits,  New  Guinea," 
Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xvii.,  p.  85. 


Fig.  37. 
Eastern  Tops  ;  after  C.  H.  Read. 

1,  2.  Stone  teetotum,  or  top  from  Mer  (Murray  Island),  Torres  Straits.  3.  Wooden  spinning- 
top  from  Timorlaut,  Tenimber  Islands.  4.  Bamboo  humming-teetotum  or  -top,  Straits  Set- 
tlements. 5.  A  similar  top  from  Sakayana,  Stewart  Islands,  West  Pacific.  6.  Malay 
peg-top  from  Sglangor,  Straits  Settlements.   The  scale  is  between  one-third  and  one-fourth. 

207 


208  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

6)  and  other  tops,  points  out  various  Malay  influences  that 
are  seen  in  this  island. 

Ling  Roth,1  in  his  very  valuable  compilation  on  Bornean 
ethnography,  records  that  the  Sea-Dyak  boys  are  very  fond 
of  playing  with  tops.  He  figures  one  on  page  104,  which  is 
a  double  cone;  the  string  is  wound  round  the  upper  half, 
and  it  is  evidently  spun  as  a  peg-top.  The  boys  play 
games,  but,  with  the  exception  of  the  top,  the  young  men 
look  upon  games  as  beneath  them. 

There  are  very  few  recorded  instances  of  tops  from 
Oceania.  A  humming-top  (Fig.  37,  No.  5)  is  said  to  come 
from  the  Stewart  Islands  (Sakayana),  which  lie  a  little  to 
the  east  of  the  Solomon  Islands  in  the  Western  Pacific ;  it 
is  made  of  bamboo,  and  is  very  similar  to  the  one  from  the 
Straits  Settlements,  except  that  the  lateral  opening  is  small 
and  of  irregular  shape. 

Read  confesses  to  having  some  doubts  about  the  correct- 
ness of  this  locality,  though  the  specimen  came  from  the 
Godeffroy  collection,  where  they  have  the  best  means  of 
testing  its  accuracy. 

Among  the  Polynesians  I  have  come  across  two  records 
only. 

Hedley  a  says: 

"  Spinning-tops  I  found  to  be  a  popular  amusement  on  Nuku- 
lailai  (Ellice  Group,  VV.  Pacific).  Their  tops  were  simply  cone 
shells  spun  on  their  apices.  A  game  was  to  spin  two  shells  in  a 
wooden  dish,  out  of  which,  by  rotating  and  colliding,  the  winner 
would  knock  the  loser.  The  shells  were  spun  either  like  a  teeto- 
tum between  the  finger  and  thumb,  or  to  give  greater  force  one 

1  H.  Ling  Roth,  The  Natives  of  Sarawak  and  British  North  Borneo,  1896, 
i.,  pp.  103,  104,  367. 

2  C.  Hedley,  "The  Atoll  of  Funafuti,  Ellice  Group,"  Australian  Museum, 
Sydney  Memoir,  iii.,  1897. 


TOPS  209 

end  was  steadied  by  the  finger  and  thumb  of  the  left  hand,  while 
the  impetus  was  given  by  drawing  the  right  forefinger  briskly 
across  it." 

The  Rev.  R.  Taylor  '  informs  us  that  "  the  whipping-top 
is  played  in  every  part  of  New  Zealand ;  the  top  used  is 
more  of  a  cone,  and  of  less  diameter  than  our  English  one, 
but  in  other  respects  it  is  just  the  same. ' '  Dr.  DiefTenbach 2 
merely  says:  "  A  top,  called  kaihora,  nicely  formed,  and 
managed  as  it  is  by  us,  supplies  another  of  their  amuse- 
ments." E.  Tregear3  speaks  of  a  whipping-top  with  two 
points. 

Dr.  Codrington  4  informs  us  that  tops  are  made  in  the 
Solomon  Islands  of  the  nut  of  a  palm  and  a  pin  of  wood, 
the  whole  visible  length  of  which,  between  two  and  three 
inches  long,  is  below  the  head.  To  spin  the  top  a  doubled 
string  is  wound  round  the  shaft,  and  the  two  ends  are  pulled 
smartly  asunder.  A  similar  top  was  used  in  Pitcairn  Island 
by  the  half-breed  Tahitian  children  of  the  Bounty  mutineers. 

Tops  are  recorded  from  Netherlands,  New  Guinea,  by  De 
Ctercq  and  Schmeltz,5  and  they  also  occur  in  Torres  Straits 
at  the  opposite  side  of  that  island  (Fig.  37,  Nos.  1,  2). 

I  have  had  as  many  as  four  men  at  a  time  spinning  tops 
for  me,  on  the  ball  of  their  big  toes,  on  the  verandah  of  my 
house  in  Murray  Island,  Torres  Straits.  These  tops,  or 
rather  teetotums,  are  made  of  pieces  of  a  fine-grained  vol- 
canic ash,  of  the  shape  of  a  split  pea,  some  four  to  six  inches 
in  diameter  and  pierced  with  a  hole  in  which  a  long  piece  of 
palm  wood  is  inserted.     The  top  is  revolved  by  rolling  the 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  172. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  32. 

3  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xix. 

4  R.  H.  Codrington,  The  Melanesians,  1891,  p.  342. 

5  De  Clercq  en  Schmeltz,  Ethnogr.  Beschri-'ving  van  Nedert.-Nieuw- 
Guinea,  1893,  p.  241. 

14 


2IO  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

stick  between  the  palms  of  the  hands.  It  may  be  spun  on  a 
slightly  concave  fragment  of  a  shell,  or  on  the  ball  of  the 
big  toe,  for  these  Papuans  sit  like  a  tailor,  but  bend  their 
feet  so  that  the  soles  face  directly  upwards. 

Quite  lately  Mr.  Etheridge  '  has  described  and  figured  a 
humming-top,  or  rather  teetotum,  from  the  Cairns  District, 
in  North  Queensland.  The  toy  is  made  of  a  small  gourd 
about  three  inches  in  diameter;  besides  the  holes  for  the 
axial  stick  the  gourd  is  pierced  by  four  holes.  The  top  is 
spun  between  the  palms  of  the  hands  on  a  blanket,  or  on 
any  piece  of  hard  ground,  and  are  often  used  to  amuse  child- 
ren. The  tops  were  used  before  the  occupation  of  this 
part  of  the  country  by  the  English.  Mr.  Etheridge  admits 
there  is  a  bare  possibility  that  they  may  be  a  remnant  of 
Malay  or  Papuan  influence.  It  is  a  significant  fact,  he  adds, 
that  the  farther  we  go  north  of  the  Australian  continent, 
the  more  apparent  is  the  resemblance  between  the  weapons 
and  the  implements  of  the  North  Australian  aborigines  to 
those  of  New  Guinea. 

In  the  recently  published  account  of  the  Horn  Expedition 
to  Central  Australia,  Dr.  Stirling  says : 2 

"  I  also  saw  them  spinning  water-worn,  round  pebbles  on  the 
bottoms  of  inverted  '  billy-cans,'  but  I  saw  none  of  the  beauti- 
fully balanced  tops  moulded  out  of  clay  and  provided  with  a  peg, 
which  the  natives  in  the  north-east  of  South  Australia  proper 
(Blanchewater) 3  spin,  in  competition  against  one  another,  on 
some  smooth  surface  such  as  a  piece  of  tin.  At  the  locality  men- 
tioned I  saw  one,  spun  by  a  lubra  (woman),  remain  '  asleep  '  for 
four  minutes." 

1  R.  Etheridge,  Junr.,  "  The  Game  of  Teetotum  Practised  by  Certain  Queens- 
land Aborigines,"  Jonrn.  Anth.  Inst.,  xxv.,  1896,  p.  259. 

2  E.  C.  Stirling,  "Report  of  the  Work  on  the  Horn  Scientific  Expedition  to 
Central  Australia,"  part  iv.,  Anthropology,  1896,  p.  86. 

3  Lat.  290  30'  S.  ;  long.  1390  6'  ;  about. 


TOPS  2  1 1 

It  is  difficult  to  believe  that  any  Malay  influence  could 
be  felt  right  in  the  heart  of  Australia. 

According  to  Andree  there  are  only  two  records  of  tops 
from  the  whole  of  America.  The  German  traveller  Kohl  x 
saw  the  boys  of  the  Odschibwa  (Ojibwa)  Indians  playing 
with  tops  made  out  of  nuts  and  acorns;  but  it  is  an  open 
question  whether  this  game  is,  as  it  were,  in  the  process  of 
evolution  among  these  Indians,  or  whether  it  has  been  in- 
troduced by  European  settlers.  The  second  record  is  more 
extraordinary,  as  it  is  a  humming-top  which  was  brought 
one  hundred  years  ago  by  Vancouver  from  Nootka  Sound, 
North-West  America,  and  therefore  before  European  influ- 
ence had  penetrated  so  far.  This  top,  which  is  exhibited  in 
the  British  Museum,2  has  a  handle,  through  which  the  string 
passes,  just  as  in  those  sold  in  the  toy-shops  of   Europe. 

The  complication  of  a  separate  perforated  handle  is  cer- 
tainly a  noteworthy  feature,  and  it  evidently  has  some  rela- 
tion to  the  whirligigs  that  Murdoch  3  describes  and  figures 
(Fig.  374)  among  the  Point  Barrow  Eskimo.  One  should 
not  rashly  surmise  that  both  of  these  somewhat  complicated 
toys  have  been  introduced  from  a  people  of  higher  culture, 
as  we  find  that  these  same  Eskimo  make  mechanical  toys. 
There  are  many  other  points  about  these  hyperboreans  that 
are  of  great  interest.  Murdoch  came  across  only  one  teeto- 
tum (p.  376,  Fig.  375)  among  the  Eskimo;  it  was  spun  with 
the  fingers. 

Dr.  Andree  did  not  recall  any  top  from  the  Negroes  of 
Africa;  but  I  find  that  a  "  sacred  humming-top  of  the  Mas- 
saningas  "  is  figured  in  page  358  of  the  English  translation 
of  Ratzel's  The  History  of  Mankind,  vol.  ii.  (1897). 

1  J.  G.  Kohl,  Kitschi-Gami,  i.,  p.  119. 

2  C.  H.  Read,  Jot*  rn.  Anth.  Inst.,  xxi.,  1891,  p.  108. 

3  J.  Murdoch,  "Ethnological  Results  of  the  Point  Barrow  Expedition," 
Ninth  Annual  Rep.  Bureau  Ethnol.,  Washington,  1887-88,  1892. 


212  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

The  history  of  the  peg-top  is  much  more  scanty.  Strutt ' 
believed  it  to  be  a  modern  invention,  and  thought  it  "  prob- 
ably originated  from  the  te-totums  and  whirligigs.  .  .  . 
The  usage  of  the  te-totum  may  be  considered  as  a  kind  of 
petty  gambling."  According  to  M.  Dillaye2  it  (la  toupie) 
is  not  mentioned  in  French  documents  older  than  the  four- 
teenth century;  and  M.  L.  Becq  de  Fouquieres  argues  that 
there  is  no  evidence  that  it  was  known  to  classical  authors. 
Godwin  Austen  3  saw  the  children  of  the  Naga  Hills  spin- 
ning peg-tops  with  string;  the  top  was  made  out  of  a  very 
hard  wood,  and  was  pointed  below.  This  top  may  be  allied 
to  some  of  the  tops  of  the  Malay  Archipelago,  which  are 
certainly  a  kind  of  peg-top. 

The  story  of  the  wandering  of  the  kite  is  much  more  con- 
sistent than  is  that  of  the  migration  of  the  top.  So  far  as 
the  far  East  is  concerned  Schlegel  has  definitely  expressed 
his  opinion  as  to  the  top  being  a  migrant  from  Europe. 
Once  established  in  Java  it  could  easily  travel  down  the 
Malay  Archipelago  and  be  stranded  with  other  flotsam  and 
jetsam  on  the  islands  which  have  been  washed  with  the 
wave  of  Malay  culture. 

If,  for  example,  the  use  of  tobacco  has  been  taught  to 
Malays  by  the  white  man  and  by  them  transferred  to  the 
Papuans,  so  that  we  found  it  smoked  in  the  Torres  Straits 
before  it  had  been  brought  directly  by  European  voyagers, 
it  is  not  too  far-fetched  to  assume  that  the  stone  teetotum 
may  have  followed  the  same  route.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
shape  of  the  Murray  Island  top  is  so  similar  to  the  heads  of 
the  disc-shaped  stone  clubs,  that  one  is  tempted  to  believe 

1  J.  Strutt,  The  Sports  and  Pastimes  of  the  People  of  England,  1801,  chap, 
iv.,  sec.  vi.,  p.  228.  Strutt  says  when  he  was  a  boy  the  te-totum  had  only  four 
sides,  marked  respectively  with  T.  (take  all),  H.  (half  of  the  stake),  N.  (noth- 
ing), and  P.  (put  down  ;  that  is,  a  stake  equal  to  that  you  put  down  at  first). 

2  F.  Dillaye,  Les  Jeux  de  la  Jeunesse,  Paris,  1885,  p.  195. 

3  Lieut. -Col.  H.  Godwin  Austen,  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  ix.,  1879,  P-  3°- 


TOPS  2 1 3 

that  this  may  have  been  its  origin,  especially  when  one  re- 
members that  in  this  island  alone,  for  a  district  extending 
for  some  hundreds  of  miles,  is  the  fine-grained,  easily  worked 
stone  found  of  which  these  tops  are  made.  The  labour  of 
making  stone  clubs  is  so  very  great  that  there  would  be  no 
inducement  to  make  playthings  out  of  a  refractory  rock; 
but  the  ash  of  this  volcanic  island  evidently  appealed  to 
some  native  as  being  a  workable  material,  and  it  is  also  sug- 
gestive that  the  motion  of  spinning  these  tops  is  similar  to 
that  employed  by  these  people  in  making  fire  by  their  fire- 
sticks  and  in  drilling  holes. 

The  sporadic  appearance  of  the  humming-top  in  North 
Queensland  is  very  remarkable.  It  really  looks  as  if  this 
was  an  independent  invention,  especially  as  Dr.  Stirling  has 
recorded  true  tops  from  Central  Australia;  but  the  fact  that 
it  is  a  humming-top  is  rather  against  this  view,  as  this  is  a 
complication  which  is  unlikely  to  arise  de  novo.  A  teeto- 
tum, or  a  simple  top,  may  have  been  invented  more  than 
once,  but  it  is  highly  improbable  that  a  humming-top 
would  be  invented  before  a  simpler  form  of  type,  and  we  know 
that  this  kind  of  top  is  found  in  the  neighbouring  Archipelago. 

The  tops  of  New  Zealand  again  require  an  explanation, 
as  there  is  no  indication  whatever  of  any  direct  Malay  influ- 
ence. The  Maories  may  have  brought  it  with  them  when 
they  migrated  to  New  Zealand,  but  then  we  should  expect 
to  find  it  more  frequently  in  Polynesia;  on  the  other  hand, 
they  may  have  learnt  it  from  the  Melanesians,  who  prob- 
ably formed  the  earlier  population. 

I  must  confess  that  I  am  by  no  means  satisfied  that  the 
top  has  had  a  single  centre  of  diffusion  from  which  it  has 
spread  to  Africa  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  North-West 
America,  to  New  Zealand,  and  to  Australia  on  the  other. 
The  problem  is  a  very  interesting  one,  but  I  do  not  think 
the  means  for  its  solution  are  yet  available. 


214  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


THE  TUG-OF-WAR 


Allusion  was  made,  when  noticing  the  mediaeval  town- 
tops,  to  the  fact  that  village  recreations  often  have  a  signifi- 
cance which  is  not  apparent  at  first  sight.  We  will  see  what 
lies  at  the  back  of  such  an  apparently  simple  sport  as  the 
tug-of-war. 

At  the  present  time  the  tug-of-war  is  merely  one  event  in 
school  or  other  "  sports";  but  we  find  that  it  has  had  a 
history  worth  recording.  In  former  days  at  Ludlow  the  in- 
habitants of  Broad  Street  and  Corve  Street  wards  had  an 
annual  tug-of-war,  employing  a  rope  three  inches  thick  and 
thirty-six  yards  long,  with  a  large  knob  at  each  end.  The 
rope,  which  was  paid  for  by  the  corporation,  was  given  out 
at  the  window  of  the  Market  Hall  by  the  mayor  at  four 
o'clock  on  the  appointed  day,  when  all  business  was  sus- 
pended and  the  shops  shut.  One  man  stood  on  another's 
shoulders,  and  the  chimney-sweep's  wife  on  his  shoulders. 
These  represented  the  Red  Knob;  three  others,  mounted  in 
the  same  way,  representing  the  Blue  Knob.  If,  during  the 
contest,  the  rope  was  pulled  down  Mill  Street,  the  Red 
Knob  won,  and  the  knobs  were  dipped  in  the  River  Teme 
in  token  of  victory;  but  if  the  Blue  Knobs  dragged  it 
through  the  Bull  Ring,  the  dipping  took  place  in  the  River 
Corve.  After  the  rope  was  won  it  was  taken  back  to  the 
Market  Hall  and  given  out  again,  and  if  the  same  side  won, 
the  contest  was  ended ;  but  if  the  opposite  side  conquered, 
then  the  rope  was  given  out  a  third  time,  and  the  victory 
remained  with  the  side  that  won  twice. 

The  rope  was  then  sold,  and  the  money  got  for  it  was 
spent  in  beer,  and  then  fighting  and  quarrelling  commenced. 
These  disorderly  scenes,  and  the  dangerous  accidents  result- 
ing, caused  this  custom  to  be  discontinued  in  185 1. 

There  are  many  other  examples  of  contests  between  two 
wards  or  two  parts  of  villages  or  towns,  which  often  take 


THE  TUG-OF-WAR  21  5 

the  form  of  a  football  contest;  nominally  it  is  a  football 
match,  but  in  reality  it  is  a  faction  fight.  Mr.  Gomme, 
from  whom  I  have  largely  borrowed,  has  collected  several 
instances  of  such  feuds  in  his  Village  Community?  and 
points  out  their  significance;  for  example,  the  Seneca  In- 
dians of  North  America  played  a  ball  game  by  phratries  (or 
clans)  the  one  against  the  other;  and  the  Greek  phratries 
developed  the  same  custom. 

In  the  North-West  Provinces  of  India  a  very  thick  grass 
rope  is  pulled  by  the  villagers  among  themselves.  The 
party  in  whose  quarter  the  rope  is  broken,  or  by  whom  the 
rope  is  pulled  out  of  the  hands  of  their  antagonists,  are 
the  victors,  and  retain  the  rope  for  a  year.  It  is  well  known 
that  the  quarters  of  an  Indian  village  are  clan  quarters. 
Now,  there  is  reason  to  believe  that  some  at  least  of  the 
contests  in  a  British  village  or  township  are  the  remnants  of 
a  really  hostile  feeling  which  existed  between  the  inhabitants 
of  those  districts. 

The  reason  for  this  hostility  is  probably  the  same  both  in 
India  and  in  Britain ;  it  is  not  so  much  local  rivalry  as  racial 
or  tribal  animosity.  In  two  parts  of  the  same  manor,  as  at 
Eling,  in  Hampshire,  or  even  in  the  same  town,  as  at  Not- 
tingham, the  modes  of  descent  of  property  may  vary;  on 
one  side  of  a  boundary  junior  right  or  borough  English  is 
the  custom,  while  on  the  other  side  of  the  boundary  the 
rule  of  primogeniture  is  followed.  The  custom  of  inherit- 
ance by  the  youngest  son  is  a  very  ancient  one,  and  in  this 
country  dates  from  long  before  the  practice  of  making  the 
eldest  son  the  heir.  In  Indian  villages  we  have  side  by  side 
the  Dravidian  aborigines,  who  are  low  castes,  and  the 
various  higher  castes,  with  their  increasing  purity  of  Aryan 
blood ;  and  it  may  be  that  in  our  British  villages  there  is  an 

1  G.  L.  Gomme,  The  Village  Community  :  with  Special  Reference  to  the  Origin 
and  Form  of  its  Survivals  in  Britain,  1890,  pp.  240-246. 


2l6  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

analogous  racial  or  tribal  mixture ;  thus  these  parish  contests, 
which  are  recognised  and  sanctioned  by  the  municipal 
authorities,  are  the  vestigial  expression  of  a  very  real  jeal- 
ousy which  had  its  origin  in  the  very  roots  of  the  history  of 
our  country. 

Side  or  faction  fights  are  common  all  over  the  world. 
The  city  of  Seoul,  in  Korea,  is  divided  into  five  districts, 
north,  south,  east,  west,  and  middle,  and  every  person  is 
officially  enrolled  under  one  of  these  directions.  This 
distribution  of  space  enters  into  the  whole  philosophy  of 
existence  in  this  part  of  the  world. 

Immediately  after  kite-flying  time,  that  is,  after  the  15th 
of  the  first  month,  these  side  or  faction  fights  take  place. 
They  are  commenced  by  little  boys,  who  make  ropes  of 
straw  and  fight  with  them.  Sides  are  formed  which  advance 
and  retreat.  Bigger  boys  join,  and  at  last  the  men  are 
drawn  into  the  fray.  Stones  are  then  the  principal  weapons 
employed,  and  many  injuries,  and  even  deaths,  result. 

In  Japan  faction  fights,  called  "  Gempei,"  occur,  which 
take  their  name,  like  the  well-known  Guelphs  and  Ghibel- 
lines,    from    the  famous  rival   families,    Genji  and   Heike, 

Gempei  "  being  a  "  portmanteau  "  word  combined  from 
Gen  and  Hei.  The  side  that  represents  the  Genji  wear 
their  colour,  white;  and  the  other,  which  represents  the 
Heike,  take  red.  The  rival  families  were  located  east  and 
west,  and  the  sides  in  these  sports  may  be  regarded  as  as- 
sociated with  these  directions.1 

Dr.  F.  Boas  informs  us  that  among  the  Eskimo  the  boys 
born  in  summer  fight  those  born  in  winter. 

In  the  first  month  of  the  year  in  South  China,  village 
fights  occur  on  the  open  plains;  sometimes  they  are  very 
serious  affairs.2 

1  Culin,  Korean  Games,  p.  63. 

2  Gray,  China,  i.,  London,  1878,  p.  256. 


THE   TUG-OF-WAR  2\J 

Professor  Culin,  in  his  valuable  Korean  Gaines,1  to  which 
I  have  had  to  refer  so  often,  gives  a  suggestive  clue  to  the 
origin  of  the  straw-rope  contest  to  which  allusion  has  just 
been  made.  This  is  played  by  any  number  of  boys  about 
the  15th  of  the  first  month.  In  the  country  the  entire 
population  of  districts  and  villages  engage  against  other  dis- 
tricts or  villages  at  this  season.  It  is  believed  that  the 
village  that  wins  will  have  a  good  harvest.  The  rope  is  of 
straw,  two  feet  in  diameter,  with  its  ends  divided  into 
branches.  The  men  take  the  main  stem,  and  the  women 
the  branches.  The  latter  frequently  do  more  than  the 
men,  as  it  is  customary  for  them  to  load  their  skirts  with 
stone  on  these  occasions.  The  Dictionnaire  Core'en  Francais 
defines  the  rope  asa"  rope  which  they  pull  by  the  two  ends 
to  secure  abundance." 

The  tug-of-war  is  a  common  amusement  among  school- 
boys in  Japan  under  the  name  of  "  rope-pulling."  Accord- 
ing to  The  Japanese  Months,  on  the  15th  day  of  the  eighth 
month  in  the  old  calendar,  people  turned  out  to  admire  the 
full  moon,  and  made  offerings  to  it  of  dango,  a  kind  of  cake 
made  of  rice,  beans,  and  sugar.  The  sport  known  as  "  tug- 
of-war  "  afforded  amusement  on  the  same  evening  to  the 
boys  of  rival  villages,  or  to  contending  parties  belonging  to 
the  same  place,  grown-up  persons  sometimes  joining  in  the 
fun.  Each  side  has  its  own  rope,  which  is  of  large  size,  and 
made  of  rice-straw.  There  is  a  loop  at  each  end,  and  a  stick 
is  passed  through  the  loop  at  one  end  of  each  rope,  so  that 
both  are  pulled  at  the  same  time.  The  contest  is  concluded 
when  one  party  is  pulled  over  the  dividing-line,  or  till  the 
ropes  break.  This  practice  is  now  a  thing  of  the  past.  It 
is  significant  that  the  period  from  the  middle  of  July  to  the 
middle   of  August  is  an  anxious    period   for  the    farmers, 

1  Stewart  Culin,  Korean  Games  :  with  Notes  on  the  Corresponding  Games  of 
China  and  Japan,  Philadelphia,  1895,  p.  35. 


218  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

whose  rice-plants  are  in  danger  of  perishing  from  lack  of 
water  should  no  rain  fall  for  several  consecutive  days. 

The  tug-of-war  thus  resolves  itself  in  Korea  and  Japan 
into  a  magic  ceremony  to  ensure  a  good  harvest.  Probably 
the  straw  rope  typifies  the  harvest,  and  the  pulling  it  over 
a  boundary  would  ensure  a  fruitful  harvest  for  the  winning 
side.  This  is  quite  in  accordance  with  the  working  of  the 
savage  mind,  as  innumerable  examples  from  what  is  known 
as  sympathetic  magic  will  testify.  It  is  interesting  to  note 
that  in  Korea  itself  the  ceremony  has  broken  down,  and  is 
degraded  in  Seoul  into  faction  fights;  but,  true  to  their 
origin,  they  begin  with  straw  ropes ;  and,  further,  it  is  note- 
worthy that  the  small  boys  retain  the  older  fashion — they 
are  more  true  to  the  traditional  custom.  Further  research 
will  show  whether  the  contests  in  our  villages  and  towns  are 
merely  racial  or  tribal  in  origin,  or  whether  there  may  not 
be  some  harvest  ritual  behind  them. 


CHAPTER    X 

THE  BULL-ROARER 

IN  some  parts  of  the  British  Islands  boys  occasionally  play 
with  a  toy  which  consists  of  a  thin  slat  of  wood  tied  to 
the  end  of  a  long  piece  of  string,  the  rapid  whirling  of  which 
results  in  a  noise  that  is  expressed  in  the  various  names 
given  to  this  simple  instrument.  Prof.  E.  B.  Tylor  informs 
me  that  the  name  of  "  bull-roarer  "  was  first  introduced  into 
anthropological  literature  by  the  Rev.  Lorimer  Fison,1  who 
compares  the  Australian  turndun  to  "  the  wooden  toy  which 
I  remember  to  have  made  as  a  boy,  called  a  '  bull-roarer,' 
and  this  term  has  since  been  universally  adopted  as  the 
technical  name  for  the  implement. 

For  some  years  past  I  have  collected  all  the  specimens 
and  information  I  could  about  this  interesting  object.  I 
have  one  specimen  made  by  a  boy  at  Balham  in  Surrey 
(London,  S.W.);  it  is  7§  inches  in  length  and  i£  inches  in 
breadth  (187  mm.  by  30  mm.).2  The  ends  are  square,  and  it 
is  serrated  along  each  side.  I  have  heard  of  it  in  Essex,  but 
have  not  seen  a  specimen. 

In  West  Suffolk  it  is  called  a  "  hummer,"  and  is  slightly 
notched;  I  have  been  told  that  in   East  Suffolk  the  edges 

1  Fison  and  Howitt,  Kamilaroi  and  Kurnai,  1880,  p.  267.  Prof.  E.  B. 
Tylor  in  his  review  of  this  book  in  The  Academy,  April  9,  1881,  p.  265,  gives 
"  whizzer"  as  an  alternative  name. 

2  Subsequently  I  give,  within  parentheses,  the  English  measurements,  fol- 
lowed by  the  same  converted  into  the  metric  system. 

2ig 


220  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

were  sometimes  plain.  I  have  several  specimens  from  dif- 
ferent parts  of  Norfolk,  where  it  is  called  "  humming  buz- 
zer," or  simply  "  buzzer"  (ioj-  x  ij,  \\\  x  ij,  Il|-  x  if; 
257  x  38,  282  x  47,  292  x  35).  The  ends  are  usually  square, 
but  the  string  end  is  rounded  in  the  last  one;  the  sides  may 
be  serrated  or  simply  notched  along  both  surfaces  of  each 
side,  the  notches  being  more  or  less  deep.  One  specimen 
"  buzz  "  from  Mid-Norfolk  is  rounded  at  the  string  end  and 
pointed  at  the  other,  and  with  only  five  notches  along  each 
side  (7 J  x  2\ ;  1 84  x  54).  I  have  been  informed  that  in  Cam- 
bridgeshire it  was  called  a  "  bull,"  and  has  plain  edges.  In 
Bedfordshire  its  name  is  **  buzzer."  The  Lincolnshire 
variety,  "  swish,"  is  quadrangular,  like  the  ordinary  Nor- 
folk form,  and  notched.  I  have  heard  of  its  occurrence  in 
the  East  Riding  of  Yorkshire,  but  have  no  details.  In  East 
Derbyshire  it  is  known  asa"  bummer  "  or  "  buzzer."  My 
Derbyshire  specimen  is  plano-convex,  the  string  end  is 
square,  and  the  other  rounded.  In  nearly  every  specimen 
the  string  passes  through  a  hole  near  one  end ;  but  in  this 
example  the  string  is  tied  in  a  nick  in  each  side  near  one 
end,  and  the  opposite  half  and  the  free  end  are  alone  serrated 
(\o\  x  i-J;  257  x  47).  A  model  of  a  Warwickshire  type  has 
the  ends  practically  square,  but  the  sides  are  slightly  con- 
cave (6  x  1}  at  each  end  and  1  £  in  the  middle ;  1 52  x  44  and 
38).  Another  model,  also  called  "  bummer,"  said  to  be 
used  in  Warwickshire,  Staffordshire,  and  Shropshire,  has 
square  ends,  and  the  sides  are  concave  near  the  string  end, 
and  there  are  four  pairs  of  oblique  grooves  in  the  middle 
(7J  x  \\  and  1  in  the  narrow  part ;  190  x  38  and  25).  I  must 
confess  that  I  am  not  satisfied  about  these  last  two  imple- 
ments. I  have  one  or  two  others  that  were  given  me  by 
the  same  friend  which  vary  considerably  in  form,  and  had 
no  localities  given  with  them.  I  reserve  these  for  the 
present,  as  I  have  my  doubts  about  them. 


Fig.  38. 
Bull-Roarers  from  the  British  Islands. 
1.  Ballycastle,  County  Antrim.    2.  Warwickshire,  Staffordshire,  and  Shropshire.     3.  Warwick- 
shire.    4    Montgomeryshire.     5.  Derbyshire.     G,  7,  8.  Norfolk.     9.  Balham  (Surrey). 


222  THE    STUDY  OF  MAN 

The  Rev.  Elias  Owen,  of  Oswestry,  kindly  had  a  "  roarer  " 
made  for  me  as  they  were  used  sixty  years  ago  in  Mont- 
gomeryshire in  Wales.  Here  again  we  have  the  East  Anglian 
pattern,  but  with  the  ends  differently  finished  off.  Although 
there  is  a  large  hole  at  one  end,  strangely  enough  the  string 
is  tied  through  a  small  hole  at  the  other  extremity  {\2\  x  2\ ; 
311  X64).     (Fig.  38,  No.  4.) 

I  have  been  told  that  the  bull-roarer  was  known  as  a 
'*  thunder-spell  "  '  in  some  parts  of  Scotland,  and  in  Aber- 
deen as  a  "thunder-bolt."  Professor  Tylor  also  records  it 
from  Scotland.2  My  friend,  Mrs.  Gomme,  has  very  kindly 
allowed  me  to  copy  the  following  from  the  second  volume 
of  her  Traditional  Games  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland 
(1898,  p.  291): 

"  Thufier- Spell. — A  thin  lath  of  wood,  about  six  inches  long 
and  three  or  four  inches  broad,  is  taken  and  rounded  at  one  end. 
A  hole  is  bored  in  that  end,  and  in  the  hole  is  tied  a  piece  of 
cord  between  two  and  three  yards  long.  It  is  then  rapidly  swung 
round,  so  as  to  produce  a  buzzing  sound.  The  more  rapidly  it 
is  swung  the  louder  is  the  noise.  It  was  believed  that  the  use  of 
this  instrument  during  a  thunder-storm  saved  one  from  being 
struck  with  '  the  thun'er-bolt.'  I  [Dr.  Gregor]  have  used  it  with 
this  intention  (Keith).  In  other  places  it  is  used  merely  to  make 
a  noise.  It  is  commonly  deeply  notched  all  round  the  edges  to 
increase  the  noise. 

1  Since  the  above  was  in  type,  Mr.  W.  S.  Laverock,  of  the  Liverpool  Mu- 
seum, has  informed  me  that  "  thunner  spells"  are  quite  common  in  Aberdeen^ 
shire  and  Kincardineshire  ;  they  were  made  by  farm-servants  and  villagers. 
They  are  usually  flat  laths,  twelve  to  fifteen  inches  in  length  and  two  and  a  half 
to  three  inches  wide  ;  the  perforated  end  was  rounded,  and  the  notching  varied 
in  amount  according  to  the  taste  and  patience  of  the  maker.  They  were  used 
with  a  short  string.  Mr.  Laverock  does  not  know  whether  the  word  "spell" 
means,  in  this  connection,  a  charm,  or  the  Scottish  term  for  a  shaving,  the 
English  "  spill." 

'l  Jouni.  Anth.  Inst.,  xix.,  p.  163. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  223 

'*  Some  years  ago  a  herd-boy  was  observed  making  one  in  a 
farm  kitchen  (Udny).  It  was  discovered  that  when  he  was  sent 
to  bring  the  cows  from  the  fields  to  the  farmyard  to  be  milked, 
he  used  it  to  frighten  them,  and  they  ran  frantically  to  their 
stalls.  The  noise  made  the  animals  dread  the  bot-fly  or  '  cleg.' 
This  torment  makes  them  throw  their  tails  up,  and  rush  with  fury 
through  the  fields  or  to  the  byres  to  shelter  themselves  from  its 
attacks.  A  formula  to  effect  the  same  purpose,  and  which  I  have 
many  and  many  a  time  used  when  herding,  was:  Cock  tail!  cock 
tail  !  cock  tail  !  Bizz-zz-zz  !  Bizz-zz-zz! — Keith  (Rev.  W. 
Gregor). 

"  Dr.  Gregor  secured  one  of  these  that  was  in  use  in  Pitsligo 
and  sent  it  to  the  Pit-Rivers  Museum  at  Oxford,  where  it  now 
lies. 

"  They  are  still  occasionally  to  be  met  with  in  country  districts, 
but  are  used  simply  for  the  purpose  of  making  a  noise." 

In  her  first  volume,  under  the  title  of  "  Bummers,"  Mrs. 
Gomme  writes : 

"  A  play  of  children.  '  Bummers  ' — a  thin  piece  of  wood 
swung  round  by  a  cord  {Blackwood' s  Magazine,  Aug.,  182 1,  p. 
35).  Jamieson  says  the  word  is  evidently  denominated  from  the 
booming  sound  produced  "  (p.  51). 

I  have  only  two  notices  of  the  bull-roarer  from  Ireland — 
one  from  the  town  and  county  of  Cork,  the  other  from  Bally- 
castle,  County  Antrim,  where  the  Rev.  L_  P.  Barnes  kindly 
gave  me  a  specimen,  which  is  a  long,  narrow  lath,  with 
straight,  smooth  sides;  the  string  end  is  square,  but  the  op- 
posite end  is  rudely  pointed  (i3f  x  1  ;  350  x  25).  (Fig.  38, 
No.  1.)  Its  use  is  very  local,  but  I  am  informed  that  the 
schoolboys  in  Coleraine  often  make  them.  Mr.  Barnes 
writes : 

"  From  inquiry  made,  I  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  '  Bull- 
roarer  '   (its  local  name)  is  not  indigenous,  but  an  importation. 


224  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

The  boy  who  gave  me  this  says  he  got  the  idea  from  his  father, 
who  is  a  coastguard;  his  father  once  tied  a  string  to  a  piece  of 
wood  lying  near  the  fireside,  and  began  to  twirl  it  round  for  the 
children's  amusement,  saying,  '  That  's  what  I  have  seen  niggers 
do  in  the  West  Indies.'  " 

This  last  remark  is  very  suggestive.  The  form  is  not  like 
that  which  I  have  collected  in  England,  and  certainly  does 
more  resemble  the  Oro-stick  of  West  Africa  (Fig.  39).  It 
would  be  a  strange  circumstance — but  not  more  strange  than 
others  that  we  have  already  studied — if  the  dreaded  god  of 
vengeance  of  West  Africa  should  become  the  plaything  of  a 
boy  in  the  north  of  Ireland.1 

Dr.  Schmeltz,  the  Director  of  the  Ethnographical  Museum 
at  Leiden,  has  written  a  laborious  monograph  on  the  bull- 
roarer.  He  commences  by  describing  a  child's  toy  well 
known  in  Germany  as  the  Waldteufel.  It  is  a  small  card- 
board cylinder,  open  at  one  end  and  closed  at  the  other;  to 
the  middle  of  the  drum  is  fastened  a  horsehair,  the  other 
end  of  which  is  tied  to  a  piece  of  wood.  When  the  imple- 
ment is  swung  round  it  makes  a  horrible  sound.  I  have  a 
perfectly  similar  toy  that  was  bought  in  the  streets  of  Cam- 
bridge, except  that  a  piece  of  fibre  replaces  the  horsehair; 
this  has  a  loop  at  the  unattached  end,  which  revolves  loosely 
in  a  notch  at  the  end  of  a  short  piece  of  wood.  The  wood 
at  this  spot  is  coated  with  resin,  so  as  to  produce  a  grating 
sound;  this  is  conducted  along  the  fibre,  and  the  cylinder 
acts  as  a  resonator.  I  have  been  unable  to  discover  the 
English  name  for  the  "  Devil  of  the  woods."     My  friend, 

1  Since  the  above  was  in  type  I  have  been  informed  that  "boomers"  are  in 
common  use  among  boys  in  County  Down.  They  are  notched  in  various  ways, 
sometimes  on  one  side  only  ;  they  appear,  in  fact,  to  be  of  very  diverse  form. 
Those  given  to  me  were  made  for  me,  and  may  not  represent  the  common  form 
of  bull-roarer  in  the  north-east  corner  of  Ireland.  My  informant  stated  that 
once  when,  as  a  boy,  he  was  playing  with  a  "  boomer"  an  old  country  woman 
said  it  was  a  "  sacred  "  thing.     It  would  be  worth  while  to  follow  up  this  clue. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  225 

Director  Schmeltz,  suggests  a  connection  between  this  toy 
and  the  bull-roarer.  I  quite  fail  to  see  how  the  simple  slat 
of  wood  could  develop  into  the  more  complicated  cylinder. 
All  one  can  say  is  that  they  both  make  a  disagreeable  sound. 
As  to  the  origin  and  significance  of  the  Waldtcufel,  nothing 
whatever  is  known,  and  we  have  no  evidence  before  us  to 
connect  this  toy  with  any  magical  or  religious  rite.1 

An  analogous  implement  to  the  bull-roarer  is  that  which 
is  called  in  America  the  "  buzz."  It  usually  consists  of  a 
small,  flat,  rectangular  piece  of  wood,  in  which  two  holes 
are  pierced,  and  through  these  a  long,  continuous  piece  of 
string  is  passed.  The  loops  of  the  string  are  held  in  the  two 
hands,  and  the  wood  is  swung  round  so  as  to  twist  the  string. 
The  hands  are  strongly  and  steadily  drawn  apart,  which 
causes  the  wood  to  revolve  at  a  rapid  rate,  and  to  produce 
a  buzzing  sound ;  if  properly  managed  the  momentum  is  so 
great  that  the  string  twists  itself  up  again,  and  so  on  in- 
definitely. 

Culin 2  informs  us  that  there  are  two  kinds  in  Korea. 
The  first  is  a  simple  circular  card  with  two  holes  through 
which  the  cords  are  passed ;  the  other  is  a  more  compli- 
cated arrangement.  The  first  form  occurs  in  China  and 
Japan.  Murdoch  describes  and  figures  one  from  the  Point 
Barrow  Eskimo,3  and  Culin  says  the  "buzz  "  is  to  be  found 
widely  distributed  among  the  Indians  of  North  America. 

It  is  an  occasional  plaything  in  England,  but  I  do  not 
know  its  history.  Mr.  Thomas  Drew  informs  me  that  on  a 
summer's  evening  fifty  years  ago  the  young  weavers  of  Bel- 
fast were  fond  of  playing  with  the  "  bummer."  It  was  an 
oblong  piece  of  wood,  pierced  with  two  holes,  and  serrated 
all  round. 

!J.  D.  E.  Schmeltz,  "Das  Schwirrholz,"  Verh.  des  Vereins  fur  naturiv. 
Unterhaltung  zu  Hamburg,  ix.,  1896,  p.  92.  2  Korean  Games,  p.  22. 

3  Ninth  Annual  Rep.  Bureau  of  Ethnol.,  p.  378. 


226  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

This  toy  has  not  yet  been  connected  with  any  ceremonial 
usage. 

A  German  friend  has  informed  me  that  he  has  seen  the 
bull-roarer  in  the  Black  Forest,  where  it  is  known  as  Schldgel ; 
and  I  have  also  heard  that  it  is  sometimes  seen  in  fairs  at 
Basel  in  Switzerland.  Tylor  {Academy,  April  9,  1881,  p. 
265)  says  it  is  called  Brummer  in  Germany.  In  West  Prus- 
sia, near  Marienwerder,  the  true  bull-roarer  {Schwirrholz) 
has  been  noted  by  Siedel.1  A  narrow  piece  of  light  wood, 
a  span  in  length,  was  fastened  to  a  whip ;  the  whirling  of  the 
whips  was  called  burren,  and  not  every  boy  could  do  this 
equally  well ;  the  success  depended  also  partly  on  the  length 
and  weight  of  the  bull-roarer,  as  well  as  on  the  nature  of  the 
whip.  The  little  piece  of  wood  had  to  be  cut  and  smoothed 
with  care  before  it  would  work  properly.  After  a  lapse  of 
thirty  years,  Siedel  has  forgotten  how  he  fastened  the  wood 
on  to  the  whip,  and  also  certain  other  details.  The  game  was 
known  in  the  neighbourhood  generally.  About  the  years 
1869  and  1870  a  number  of  the  pure  Germans  of  this  district 
emigrated  to  America,  and  their  place  has  been  partly  taken 
by  Poles,  and  it  would  be  interesting  to  find  out  whether  the 
Polish  children  have  adopted  this  toy,  or  whether  it  is 
restricted  to  the  Germans. 

The  distribution  of  the  bull-roarer  in  Europe  is  carried  a 
step  farther  by  Figura,2  who  states  that  it  not  only  occurs 
in  Poland  but  in  and  beyond  the  Carpathians.  He  was  born 
on  the  banks  of  the  San  in  Galicia,  which  separates  the 
Ruter  and  the  Poles,  and  the  bull-roarer  is  used  on  both 
sides  of  the  river.      He  says : 

"As  a  child  of  agricultural  parents,  I  often  returned  in  the 
evening  to  the  village  on  horseback,  driving  the  cattle  home. 

1  H.  Siedel,  "  Das  Schwirrholz  in  Westpreussen,"  Globus,  1896,  p.  67. 
8  F.  Figura,  "  Das  Schwirrholz  in  Galizien,"  Ibid.,  p.  226. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  227 

Not  always,  but  often,  at  such  times  the  bull-roarer  is  used  by 
the  young  herdsmen  when  in  good  humour.  The  bull-roarer  is 
a  longish,  thin  piece  of  wood,  notched  at  one  end  on  both  sides, 
and  fastened  with  a  simple  knot  at  the  end  of  a  whip.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  revolutions  the   bull-roarer   produces  a  note 

corresponding  to  the  letters  b s  (greatly  protracted).      By 

swinging  some  time  and  more  quickly  the  high  note  passes  into 
a  low  organ  note.  This  tuning  effect  is  called  in  Galicia,  among 
both  Poles  and  Ruthenians,  bzik.  The  wooden  object  itself  has 
no  name.  This  buzzing  or  humming  noise  excites  pasturing 
cattle.  As  soon  as  the  bull-roarers  are  started  the  calves  stretch 
out  their  tails  into  the  air,  and  kick  out  their  hind  legs,  some- 
times to  the  right,  sometimes  to  the  left,  as  if  they  were  dancing. 
After  some  minutes  the  old  cattle  follow  the  young  ones,  and 
there  is  a  general  stampede  to  the  village.  Therefore  one  says 
in  Galicia  that  a  man  whose  brain  is  not  quite  right  has  a  '  bzik. ' 
It  is  supposed  that  the  animals  get  into  an  idiotic  condition 
owing  to  the  buzzing  of  the  bull-roarer. 

11  In  what  a  curious  way  an  idea  may  change  may  be  seen  from 
the  following.  It  is  well  known  that  in  the  year  1831  thousands 
of  young  Poles  emigrated  to  foreign  parts,  especially  to  France, 
and  there  a  great  number  enlisted  in  the  Algerian  foreign  legion. 
The  Poles  used  to  play  cards,  and  their  game  was  called  bzik. 
The  Frenchmen  got  to  like  the  game;  they  could  pronounce  the 
word,  but  in  writing  it  down  according  to  French  orthography  it 
became  bezique  !  Thus  this  favourite  game  of  the  French  gaming 
clubs  owes  its  name  to  the  bull-roarer." 

In  one  of  his  charming  and  suggestive  essays  Andrew 
Lang  1  first  drew  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  bull-roarer 
was  employed  in  ancient  Greece  in  connection  with  the 
Dionysiac  Mysteries. 

"  Clemens  of  Alexandria,  and  Arnobius,  an  early  Christian 

1  Andrew  Lang,  "The  Bull- Roarer :  A  Study  of  the  Mysteries,"  Custom 
and  Myth,  2nd  edition,  1885,  p.  39. 


228  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

father  who  follows  Clemens,  describe  certain  toys  of  the  child 
Dionysus  which  were  used  in  the  mysteries.  Among  these  are 
turbines,  UGbvoi  and  pO}xjioi.  The  ordinary  dictionaries  interpret 
all  these  as  whipping-tops,  adding  that  popifioZ  is  sometimes  '  a 
magic  wheel. '  The  ancient  scholiast  on  Clemens,  however,  writes : 
1  The  HGoroS  is  a  little  piece  of  wood  to  which  a  string  is  fastened, 
and  in  the  mysteries  it  is  whirled  round  to  make  a  roaring  noise.' 

"  In  the  part  of  the  Dionysiac  mysteries  at  which  the  toys  of 
the  child  Dionysus  were  exhibited,  and  during  which  (as  it  seems) 
the  bull-roarer  was  whirred,  the  performers  daubed  themselves 
all  over  with  clay.  This  we  learn  from  a  passage  in  which  De- 
mosthenes describes  the  youth  of  his  hated  adversary,  yEschines. 
The  mother  of  yEschines,  he  says,  was  a  kind  of  '  wise  woman,' 
and  dabbler  in  mysteries,  /Eschines  used  to  aid  her  by  bedaub- 
ing the  initiate  over  with  clay  and  bran.  The  word  here  used  by 
Demosthenes  is  explained  by  Harpocration  as  the  ritual  term  for 
daubing  the  initiated.  A  story  was  told,  as  usual,  to  explain  this 
rite.  It  was  said  that  when  the  Titans  attacked  Dionysus  and 
tore  him  to  pieces,  they  painted  themselves,  first  with  clay,  or 
gypsum,  that  they  might  not  be  recognised.  Nonnus  shows, 
in  several  places,  that  down  to  his  time  the  celebrants  of  the 
Bacchic  mysteries  retained  this  dirty  trick. 

"  In  Lucian's  Treatise  on  Dancing  we  read,  '  I  pass  over  the 
fact  that  you  cannot  find  a  single  ancient  mystery  in  which  there 
is  not  dancing.  .  .  .  To  prove  this  I  will  not  mention  the 
secret  acts  of  worship,  on  account  of  the  uninitiated.  But  this 
much  all  men  know,  that  most  people  say  of  those  who  reveal  the 
mysteries,  that  they  "  dance  them  out."  '  Lucian  obviously  in- 
tends to  say  that  the  matter  of  the  mysteries  was  set  forth  in 
ballets  (Taction.  Now  this  is  exactly  the  case  in  the  surviving 
mysteries  of  the  Bushmen.  Mr.  Orpen,  the  chief  magistrate  in 
St.  John's  Territory,  made  the  acquaintance  of  Qing,  one  of  the 
last  of  an  all  but  exterminated  tribe.  He  gave  a  good  deal  of 
information  about  the  myths  of  his  people,  but  refused  to  answer 
certain  questions.1  '  You  are  now  asking  the  secrets  that  are 
1  Cape  Monthly  Magazine,  July,  1874. 


THE  BULL-ROARER 


not  spoken  of.'  Mr.  Orpen  asked,  '  Do  you  know  the  secrets  ?  ' 
Qing  replied,  '  No,  only  the  initiated  men  of  that  dance  know 
these  things.'  To  '  dance  '  this  or  that  means  '  to  be  acquainted 
with  this  or  that  mystery  ' ;  the  dances  were  originally  taught  by 
Cagn,  the  mantis,  or  grasshopper  god.  In  many  mysteries  Qing, 
as  a  young  man,  was  not  initiated.  He  could  not  '  dance  them 
out.'  " 

This  is  the  whole  of  the  evidence  I  have  been  able  to 
gather  respecting  the  occurrence  of  the  bull-roarer  in 
Europe. 

In  Africa  it  is  found  in  the  west  and  south.  Mrs.  R. 
Braithwaite  Batty1  describes  the  cult  of  Oro  ("  Torment  "), 
a  god  of  terror  and  vengeance.  The  Oro  represents  the 
active  embodiment  of  the  civil  power,  the  local  police,  the 
mysterious  head  or  idol  of  the  civil  government.  Under 
the  name  of  Oro  the  initiates  exercise  unrestricted  and  un- 
questioned vengeance  on  offenders.  Any  woman  getting  a 
sight  of  or  finding  out  the  secrets  of  Oro  would  be  put  to 
death. 

"  The  supposed  '  voice  of  Oro  '  proceeds  from  a  small  piece  of 
wood,  actually  worshipped  as  a  god — narrow  and  tapering  at  each 
end — somewhat  thinner  at  the  edges  than  in  the  middle,  about 
an  inch  wide,  and  measuring  from  nearly  a  foot  to  three  feet  in 
length.  This  Oro  stick  is  attached  to  a  string,  which  is  fastened 
to  the  thin  end  of  a  bamboo,  or  pliable  rod,  of  from  six  to  eight 
feet  or  more  in  length,  the  string  being  about  double  the  length 
of  the  stem  or  handle,  which  is  used  something  after  the  fashion 
of  a  long  carter's  whip.  The  motion  is  horizontal,  rotary,  and 
continuous.  According  to  the  velocity  and  the  size  of  the  stick  is 
the  sound  produced — sometimes  a  high,  shrill  tone,  sometimes 
deep  and  grave.  The  largest  stick  requires  a  man  of  gigantic 
strength  to  twirl  it  "  (Fig.  39). 

1  R.  Braithwaite  Batty,  "Notes  on  the  Yoruba  Country,"  Journ.  Anth, 
Inst.,  xix.,  1890,  p.  160. 


230 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


The  Bushmen  of  South  Africa  have  a  bull-roarer  which 
slightly  increases  in  width  towards  its  free  end,  and  then 
has  a  pointed  termination  ;  the  button-like  attached  end  has 
a  circular  notch  round  which  its  string  is  tied,  and  the  other 


Fig.  39. 

Yoruba  Bull-Roarers,  for  Producing  the  "  Voice  of  Oro." 

One-sixth  natural  size. 


end  of  the  string  is  fastened  to  a  stick.  It  is  spoken  of  as  a 
rain-charm,  and  is  said  to  be  also  used  as  a  clapper  in  driving 
game,  and  again,  "  They  try  to  charm  their  luck  in  hunting 
by  means  of  bull-roarers  "  '  (Fig.  40,  No.  1). 

1  Ratzel,    The  History  of  Mankind  (English  edition),  ii.,  pp.  275,  276  ;  i., 
frontispiece. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  23 1 

According  to  a  correspondent  of  Professor  Tylor's  in 
South  Africa,  the  bull-roarer  is  employed  to  call  the  men  to 
the  celebration  of  secret  functions.  A  minute  description 
of  the  instrument  and  of  its  magical  power  to  raise  a  wind  is 
given  in  Theal's  Kaffir  Folklore,  p.  209. 1 

He  says :  "  There  is  a  kind  of  superstition  connected  with 
the  nodiivu  that  playing  with  it  invites  a  gale  of  wind.  Men 
will,  on  this  account,  often  prevent  boys  from  using  it  when 
they  desire  calm  weather  for  any  purpose." 

Mrs.  Carey-Hobson  also  records  the  use  of  the  nodhvn 
among  the  Amakosa  Kaffirs  {Jonrn.  Anth.  List.,  xiv.,  p. 
325).  Prof.  E.  B.  Tylor  {Academy,  April  9,  1881,  p.  265) 
says  it  is  used  among  the  Kaffirs  "  for  rain-making,  and  in 
connection  with  the  rites  of  initiation  to  warn  women  off." 

The  bull-roarer  is  found  sporadically  throughout  America. 
The  Eskimo  on  the  north-west  coast  have  one  which  is 
ellipsoidal  in  form  with  notched  edges  (Fig.  40,  No.  2);  it 

appears  to  be  purely  a  child's  toy."  2  There  are  several 
records  of  its  occurrence  among  the  North  American  Indians. 
Bourke  3  first  met  with  the  bull-roarer  at  the  snake  dance  of 
the  Tusayan,  in  the  village  of  Walpi,  Arizona,  in  the  month 
of  August.  "  The  medicine-men  twirled  it  rapidly,  and 
with  a  uniform  motion,  about  the  head,  and  from  front  to 
rear,  and  succeeded  in  faithfully  imitating  the  sound  of  a 
gust  of  rain-laden  wind.  As  explained  by  one  of  the 
medicine-men,  by  making  this  sound  they  compelled  the 
wind  and  rain  to  come  to  the  aid  of  the  crops."  It  is  in 
use  among  the  Apache,  and  for  the  same  purpose.  The 
prehistoric  "  cliff-dwellers  "  of  the  Verde  Valley,  in  Central 
Arizona,  also  employed  it.      Bourke  also  found  it  among  the 

1  Lang,  loc.  cit.,  p.  38,  and  Bourke,  loc.  cit.,  p.  479. 

2  J.  Murdoch,  "Ethnological  Results  of  the  Point  Barrow  Expedition," 
Ninth  Ann.  Rep.  Bureau  of  Ethnol.,  1887-88  (1892),  p.  378. 

3  J.  G.  Bourke,  "The  Medicine-Men  of  the  Apache,"  Ibid.,  1893,  p.  477. 


232  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Rio  Grande  Pueblo  tribes  and  the  Zuni.  Dr.  Washington 
Matthews  has  described  it  as  existing  among  the  Navajo, 
and  Major  J.  W.  Powell  has  observed  it  in  use  among  the 
Utes  of  Nevada  and  Utah.  Captain  Bourke  describes  three 
forms  of  bull-roarers,  all  apparently  connected  in  symbolism 
with  the  lightning.  The  first  terminates  in  a  triangular 
point,  and  the  general  shape  is  either  that  of  a  long,  narrow 
parallelogram,  capped  with  an  equilateral  triangle,  or  else 
the  whole  figure  is  that  of  a  slender  isosceles  triangle. 
When  the  former  shape  was  used,  as  at  the  Tusayan  snake 
dance,1  the  tracing  of  a  snake  or  lightning  in  blue  or 
yellow  followed  down  the  length  of  the  rhombus  and  ter- 
minated in  the  small  triangle,  which  did  duty  as  the  snake's 
head.  The  second  form  was  serrated  on  both  edges  to 
simulate  the  form  of  the  snake  or  lightning;  it  is  found 
among  the  Navajo  and  in  the  old  cliff  dwellings.  The  third 
form,  in  use  among  the  Apache,  is  an  oblong,  7  or  8  inches 
in  length,  and  \\  inches  in  breadth.  The  pierced  end  is 
rounded  to  represent  rudely  a  human  head.  The  Apache 
explained  that  the  lines  on  the  front  side  of  the  rhombus 
were  the  entrails,  and  those  on  the  rear  side,  the  hair  of  their 
wind  god.  The  hair  is  of  several  colours,  and  represents 
the  lightning.  Bourke  was  led  to  believe  that  the  rhombus 
(as  he  terms  it)  of  the  Apache  was  made  by  the  medicine- 
men from  wood,  generally  pine  or  fir,  which  had  been  struck 
by  lightning  on  the  mountain-tops.  Such  wood  is  held  in 
the  highest  estimation  among  them,  and  is  used  for  the 
manufacture  of  amulets  of  especial  efficacy.  The  Apache 
name  for  the  rhombus  is  "  sounding  wood  M  (Fig.  40, 
No.  3). 

The  sympathetic  American  anthropologist,  Mr.  Cushing, 
also  found  a  bull-roarer  among  the  Zufii.      He  says: 

1  Cf  also  J.  G.  Bourke,   The  Snake  Dance  of  the  Moquis  of  Arizona,  Lon- 
don, 1884,  pp.  158,  159,  pi.  xiii. 


THE   BULL-ROARER  233 

H  I  heard  one  morning  a  deep,  whirring  noise.  Running  out, 
I  saw  a  procession  of  three  priests  of  the  bow,  gorgeous  and 
solemn  with  sacred  embroideries  and  war  paint  .  .  .  each 
distinguished  by  his  badge  of  degree.  The  principal  priest  car- 
ried in  his  arms  a  wooden  idol,  ferocious  in  aspect,  yet  beautiful 
with  its  decorations  of  shell,  turquoise,  and  brilliant  paint.  It 
was  nearly  hidden  by  symbolic  slats  and  prayer-sticks  most 
elaborately  plumed.  He  was  preceded  by  a  guardian  with  drawn 
bow  and  arrows,  while  another  followed,  twirling  the  sounding- 
slat,  which  had  attracted  alike  my  attention  and  that  of  hundreds 
of  the  Indians.  .  .  .  Slowly  they  wound  their  way  down  the 
hill,  across  the  river,  and  off  toward  the  mountain  of  thunder."  ' 

Schmeltz  a  describes  and  figures  two  bull-roarers  in  the 
Rijks  Ethnographisch  Museum  in  Leiden,  which  were 
obtained  by  Dr.  H.  Ten  Kate  from  the  Papago  and  the 
Pima  tribes.  They  are  long  and  narrow,  being  respectively 
18J-  inches  and  15^-  inches  in  length;  both  are  painted  with 
simple  devices  in  red.  The  only  information  about  them  is 
on  a  label  which  states  that  they  produce  a  buzzing  noise 
and  are  used  to  frighten  away  evil  spirits  (Fig.  40,  No.  4). 

The  next  American  locality  is  Central  Brazil,  where  Von 
den  Steinen  3  met  with  it  in  his  second  Xingu  expedition. 
One,  which  was  straight  at  one  end  and  pointed  at  the  other 
and  23f  inches  in  length,  was  found  in  a  flute-house  of  the 
Mehinaku ;  it  was  red  in  the  middle  and  black  at  each  end. 
Two  others,  which  were  shaped  like  a  fish,  were  obtained 
from  the  Nahuqua;  one  was  decorated  with  a  snake  design 
(Fig.  40,  No.  5),  and  the  other  had  a  fish  or  bat  pattern; 
they  were  about  14  inches  in  length.     The  Nahuqua  showed 

1  F.  H.  Cushing,  "  My  Adventures  in  Zufii,"  The  Century  Magazine,  xxvi. 
(N.S.  iv.),  1S83,  p.  29. 

2  J.  D.  E.  Schmeltz,  "Das  Schwirrholz  Versucheiner  Monographic,"  Verh. 
des  Vereins  fiir  natunv.   Unterhaltung  zu  Hamburg,  Bd.  ix.,  1 896,  p.  121. 

3  Karl  von  den  Steinen,  Unier  den  Naturvolkem  Central  Brasiliens,  Berlin, 
1894,  p.  327. 


234  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

them  in  public  in  the  middle  of  the  village  how  they  were 
used  ;  the  women  were  not  driven  away.  The  Bakairi  call  the 
bull-roarer  "  thunder  and  lightning,"  or  u  thunder-storm." 
While  the  Bakairi  and  other  tribes  use  it  only  at  mask 
dances,  or  also  as  a  plaything,  on  the  river  St.  Lourenco 
among  the  Bororo  the  bull-roarer  is  employed  only  at  funeral 
festivities.1.  They  swing  it  first  when  all  the  things  which 
belonged  to  the  deceased  are  burnt,  and  while  in  a  panto- 
mime they  tell  the  spirits  of  those  previously  deceased,  and 
who  are  there  present,  that  nothing  has  been  kept  back  from 
their  dead  brother,  and  that  they,  the  spirits,  need  not  look 
for  anything  more  in  the  village.  The  bull-roarer  is  whirled 
a  second  time  when  the  bones  of  the  deceased  are  carried 
out  of  the  village,  and  his  spirit  accompanies  them.  The 
underlying  idea  of  all  these  festivals  is  the  great  fear  that 
the  dead  should  return  to  fetch  a  living  person.  The  women 
are  not  admitted  to  the  ceremonies  which  have  this  inten- 
tion. During  these  times  the  women  hide  themselves  in 
the  forest  or  in  their  houses ;  if  any  woman  were  present  she 
would  die,  even  if  she  only  saw  the  bull-roarer.  Wallace 
tells  us  that  among  the  Uaup£s  Indians  in  the  Amazon  dis- 
trict the  women  flee  at  the  sound  of  the  flutes  on  which  are 
played  the  Juripari  or  "  devil  music." 

"  From  the  moment  the  music  was  first  heard  not  a  female,  old 
or  young,  was  to  be  seen;  for  it  is  one  of  the  strangest  super- 
stitions of  the  Uaupes  Indians  that  they  consider  it  dangerous 
for  a  woman  ever  to  see  one  of  these  instruments,  that  having 
done  so  she  is  punished  with  death,  generally  by  poison.  Even 
should  the  view  be  perfectly  accidental,  or  should  there  be  only 
a  suspicion  that  the  proscribed  articles  have  been  seen,  no  mercy 
is  shown."  a 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  497. 

2  Alfred  R.  Wallace,  A  Narrative  of  Travels  on  the  Amazon  and  Rio  Negro, 
1853.  P-  349- 


THE  BULL-ROARER  235 

Among  the  Bororo  they  fear  for  the  women  ;  among  other 
tribes  (and  each  tribe  must  be  investigated  separately)  the 
women  are  threatened  with  death.  The  Bakairi  women  are 
threatened  if  they  should  enter  the  flute-house  of  the  men. 
Thus  the  saying,  "  The  women  must  die,"  may  have  very 
different  meanings. 

Von  den  Steinen  found  it  nearly  impossible  to  get  a  bull- 
roarer  from  the  Bororo  tribe.  The  fear  of  its  being  misap- 
plied was  so  great  that  they  prayed  him  not  to  show  even 
the  drawing  of  one  to  the  women.  When  he  spoke  about 
buying  one  they  were  hidden  ;  when  he  spoke  casually 
about  a  bull-roarer — as  one  speaks  of  bows  and  arrows — the 
men  were  frightened  and  turned  away,  clearly  showing  that 
they  did  not  want  to  hear  it  mentioned.  The  sentiment  is 
connected  with  the  fear  of  death.  The  illustrious  German 
traveller  gives  the  following  interesting  account  of  how  he 
obtained  some  specimens: 

11  We  only  got  the  bull-roarers  from  three  young  lads  in  the 
hobble-de-hoy  stage,  who  valued  some  small  red  beads  as  much 
as  the  bull-roarer.  They  made  and  painted  them  in  the  forest. 
First  one  came  very  secretly  on  a  dark  and  misty  night  to  our 
room  and  asked  that  the  door  and  window-shutters  might  be 
closed.  Then  came  the  second  and  after  him  the  third.  Each  had 
a  bull-roarer  hidden  under  a  cloth.  They  whispered  that  we  had 
to  hide  them  very  carefully,  because  women  and  children  would 
die  if  they  saw  them,  and  they  also  wished  that  the  men  should 
not  hear  anything  about  it  (the  naughty  boy  Tobakiu  was  greatly 
afraid  of  his  father),  because  they  would  become  '  brabo  '  and  get  a 
beating.  We  were  careful  to  let  them  see  us  put  the  dangerous 
pieces  of  wood  [Fig.  40,  No.  6]  right  at  the  bottom  of  our  box."  1 

Dr.  Paul  Ehrenreich  mentions  a  having  twice  come  across 

1  Von  den  Steinen,  loc.  cit.,  p.  498. 

2  Paul  Ehrenreich,  "  Beitrager  zur  Volkerkunde  Brasiliens."  Veroffentl.  des 
Kgl.  Mus.  fur  Volkerkunde,  Berlin,  1891,  pp.  38,  71. 


236  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

the  bull-roarer  on  his  travels  in  the  interior  of  Brazil.  He 
says  it  is  not  used  by  the  Karaya  on  the  Araguaya,  at  least 
he  could  learn  nothing  about  it,  and  among  the  Ipurina  of 
the  Rio  Purus  a  little  bull-roarer  of  a  fish-form  was  obtained, 
but  nothing  could  be  gathered  as  to  its  use. 

The  Ethnographical  Museum  at  Leiden  has,  according  to 
Schmeltz,1  a  bull-roarer  from  the  small  island  of  Aruba,  off 
Venezuela.  It  is  oval  in  form,  roughly  made,  and  used  as 
a  toy.  The  population  of  the  island  is  a  mixture  of  Indians 
and  Negroes.  Schmeltz  reminds  us  that  Von  den  Steinen 
regards  the  Caribs  as  allied  to  the  Nahuquas. 

Of  the  Peruvians  we  are  informed  that  "  their  belief  was 
that  there  was  a  man  in  the  sky  with  a  sling  and  a  stick, 
and  that  in  his  power  were  the  rain,  the  hail,  the  thunder, 
and  all  else  that  appertains  to  the  regions  of  the  air  where 
clouds  are  formed."  2 

Mr.  W.  Skeat,  of  the  Federated  Malay  States  Service, 
has  informed  me  that  he  has  collected  a  couple  of  bull- 
roarers  (lembing  buluh,  "  bamboo  spear")  from  a  Patani 
boatman,  of  the  Kuala-Langat  district  in  Selangor.  Patani 
is  an  independent  Malay  State  on  the  east  coast  of  the 
Malay  Peninsula.  The  bull-roarers  (Fig.  40,  No.  7) 3  are 
used  for  scaring  elephants  away  from  the  plantations.  One 
informant  said  "  they  make  a  noise  like  a  tiger."  This  is 
the  first  record  of  the  occurrence  of  the  bull-roarer  on  the 
mainland  of  Asia,  and  its  use  to  frighten  elephants  is  anal- 
ogous to  the  use  it  is  put  to  by  the  Bushmen  of  South 
Africa,  as  well  as  by  boys  in  Galicia  and  Scotland. 

Schmeltz  4  knows  of  only  one  true  example  of  the  bull- 

1  Schmeltz,  loc.  cit.,  p.  119. 

2  Clements  R.  Markham,  "  Note  on  Garcilasso  de  la  Vega,"  in  Hakluyt  Soc, 
vol.  xli.,  quoting  Acosta,  lib.  v.,  cap.  iv. 

3  There  should  have  been  a  tang  at  the  upper  end  of  this  figure ;  the  speci- 
men is  eleven  inches  long. 

4  Schmeltz,  loc.  cit.,  p.  103. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  237 

roarer  from  the  Malay  Archipelago.  It  occurs  among 
Toba-Batak  of  Sumatra,  and  is  a  plano-convex,  narrow, 
oblong  piece  of  wood  about  4^-  inches  in  length  (Fig.  40, 
No.  8).  It  is  only  a  plaything  for  small  children.  Another 
child's  toy  from  Java,  which  is  also  in  the  Royal  Ethno- 
graphical Museum  at  Leiden,  has  some  resemblance  to  a 
bull-roarer,  but  it  is  so  specialised  that  we  can  pass  it  by,  as 
it  may  have  quite  another  origin. 

It  is  also  entirely  wanting,  so  far  as  we  know,  from  Poly- 
nesia, with  the  exception  of  New  Zealand.  It  is  worth 
bearing  in  mind  that  these  islands  were  almost  certainly  in- 
habited by  Melanesians  before  the  Maori  invasion,  and  the 
bull-roarer  may  belong  to  the  older  population.  A  highly 
decorated  specimen  occurs  in  the  British  Museum;  it  was 
first  figured  and  noted  by  Lang.1  We  have  no  information 
as  to  its  use. 

When  we  turn  to  the  black  races  of  Oceania  we  find  a 
very  different  state  of  affairs.  Alike  among  the  noisy,  ex- 
citable, frizzly-haired  natives  of  the  Melanesian  Archipelago, 
or  of  the  great  island  of  New  Guinea,  and  the  taciturn, 
apathetic,  curly-haired  black  fellows  of  Australia,  do  we 
finding  it  playing  a  very  important  part  in  the  social  life  of 
the  people. 

Dr.  Codrington,  the  erudite  missionary  of  Melanesia,  has 
recorded  a  bull-roarer  in  connection  with  the  Matambala 
mysteries  in  Florida,  one  of  the  Solomon  Islands.2  In  ad- 
mission to  these  mysteries  there  was  no  limit  of  age  and  no 
time  of  life  more  appropriate  than  another;  even  sucklings 
were  made  Matambala;  for  the  latter  the  men  would  go 
into  the  villages  and  beg  milk  from  the  women,  since  the 
infants   could    not    come  out  of    the  sacred  precincts  and 

1  Lang,  loc.  cit.,  p.  35. 

2  R.  H.  Codrington,  The  Melanesians  :   Studies  in  their  Anthropology  and 
Folk-Lore,  Oxford,  1891,  pp.  98,  342. 


238  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

the  women  could  not  go  in.  During  the  three  months  of 
the  ceremony  the  Matambala,  under  cover  of  the  terror  of 
their  pretended  association  with  ghosts,  were  playing  tricks 
and  robbing  all  the  country  round.  From  time  to  time  they 
sacrificed  to  Siko.  More  than  once  they  made  their  appear- 
ance in  the  villages;  this  they  did  at  night-time,  taking 
with  them  buro  (bull-roarers)  and  seesee  (bundles  of  coco-nut 
fronds  to  beat  over  a  stick).  When  they  approached  a  vil- 
lage they  beat  the  seesee  and  whirled  the  buro ;  all  the 
women  in  the  village  shut  fast  their  houses  and  were  much 
afraid,  and  gave  food  to  the  men  through  small  holes  in  the 
walls  of  their  houses.  The  downfall  of  this  superstition  and 
imposture,  says  Dr.  Codrington,  has  been  complete.  No 
Matambala  celebration  has  taken  place  for  years;  all  the 
young  people  know  how  the  thing  was  done,  the  sacred 
precincts  were  explored,  bull-roarers  became  the  playthings 
of  the  boys,  and  the  old  men  sat  and  wept  over  the  pro- 
fanation and  their  loss  of  power  and  privilege. 

It  is  only  in  Florida  that  any  superstitious  character  be- 
longs to  the  bull-roarer.  There  is  no  mystery  about  it 
when  it  is  used  in  the  Banks  Islands  to  drive  away  a  ghost, 
as  in  Mota,  where  it  is  called  nanamatea,  "  death-maker  "  ; 
or  to  make  a  moaning  sound,  as  in  Merlav,  where  it  is  called 
worung-tamb,  "  a  wailer,"  and  used  the  night  after  death. 
It  is  often  a  common  plaything;  in  Vanua  Lava  they  call  it 
mala,  "  pig,"  from  the  noise  it  makes;  in  Maewo  it  is  tal- 
viv,  "  a  whirring  string  "  ;  in  Araga  it  is  merely  tavire  bua, 
"  a  bit  of  bamboo." 

The  bull-roarer  is  too  well  known  in  the  Banks  Islands  to 
be  used  in  mysteries,  and  so  another  apparatus  is  employed 
in  the  cult  of  the  Great  Tamate  (Great  "  Ghost  "),  by  which 
the  peculiar,  and  certainly  very  impressive,  sound  is  made, 
which  is  believed  by  the  outsiders  to  be  the  cry  or  voice  of 
the  ghosts.     This  is  a  flat,  smooth  stone,  on  which  the  butt- 


THE   BULL-ROARER  239 

end  of  the  stalk  of  a  fan  of  palm  is  rubbed.  The  vibration 
of  the  fan  produces  an  extraordinary  sound,  which  can  be 
modulated  in  strength  and  tone  at  the  will  of  the  performer.1 

In  New  Guinea  the  bull-roarer  is  known  at  one  or  two 
places  in  Kaiser  Wilhelms-Land.  Krause 2  obtained  one 
from  Finsch  Hafen  about  sixteen  inches  in  length,  and  de- 
corated with  an  insect,3  and  Dr.  O.  Schellong 4  says  they 
play  a  great  part  in  the  circumcision  feast  in  the  same  dis- 
trict. They  serve  to  warn  off  the  women,  and  are  not 
allowed  to  be  seen  by  them.  We  thus  get  an  explanation 
of  some  objects  collected  by  Finsch 5  from  Friedrich- 
Wilhelmshafen.  At  Bilia  they  were  wrapped  up  carefully 
in  tapa,  and  kept  in  the  assembly  house;  the  natives  seemed 
to  regard  them  with  a  tabu-like  fear,  and  nobody  was 
allowed  to  look  at  them. 

We  have  more  information  regarding  the  bull-roarer  in 
British  New  Guinea,  where  it  occurs  in  Torres  Straits,  and 
along  the  northern  shore  of  the  Papuan  Gulf.  So  far  as 
our  present  knowledge  goes  it  is  associated  with  mask 
dances,  and  is  employed  only  by  the  peoples  6  whom 
Mr.  Ray  and  myself7  term  V  Papuans,"  as  in  distinc- 
tion to  the  Melanesian  immigrants  of  the  south-eastern 
peninsula. 

The    energetic    and    enthusiastic   pioneer   missionary   of 

1  Codrington,  loc.  cii.,  p.  80. 

2  E.  Krause,  Zeitschr .fur  Ethnol,  xx.,  188S  ;    Verhand/.,  p.  267. 

3  Cf,  A.  C.  Haddon,  Decorative  Art  of  British  New  Guinea,  p.  103. 

4  O.  Schellong,  "Das  Barlum-Fest  der  Gegend  Finschhafens,"  Lnternat. 
Arch,  fur  Ethnogr.,  ii.,  1889,  p.  145. 

5  O.  Finsch,  Ethnologischer  Atlas,  taf.  v.,  figs.  5,  6,  Leipzig,  1888  ;  "  Eth- 
nologische  Erfahrungen,"  etc.,  Anna/en  des  K.  K.  Nat.  Hof museums,  Wien, 
1S91,  p.  65  [203]. 

6  A.  C.  Haddon,  Decor.  Art,  p.  254,  and  Evolution  in  Art,  1895,  p.  62. 

7  S.  H.  Ray  and  A.  C.  Haddon,  "A  Study  of  the  Languages  of  Torres 
Straits,"  Part  i.,  Proc.  Roy.Lrish  Acad.  (3),  ii.,  1893,  p.  463  ;  Part  ii.,  vol.  iv., 
1896,  p.  119  {cf.  p.  370). 


240  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

British  New  Guinea,  the  Rev.  James  Chalmers,  or  "  Tarn- 
ate,"  as  he  likes  to  be  called  by  his  black  and  his  white 
friends,  has  described  the  initiation  ceremony  among  the 
Toaripi  (Motu-Motu).  At  about  the  age  of  seventeen  or 
eighteen  the  boys  enter  the  Eramo  (sacred  house);  they 
leave  off  the  sporran  worn  by  the  boys,  and  adopt  the  string 
worn  by  the  men;  their  heads  are  shaved,  and  they  then  re- 
main many  months  until  the  hair  has  grown  long  again. 
There  is  a  tabu  on  certain  kinds  of  food.  "  Not  until  after 
they  have  left  the  Eramo  is  the  Roaring  Bull  [bull-roarer, 
tiparu]  seen  "  ;  nor  until  then  can  an  initiate  "  wear  a  mask 
or  join  in  the  dances  and  drum-beatings  of  the  tribe,  and 
only  then  is  he  considered  a  man.  Not  until  he  has  de- 
scended from  the  Eramo  does  he  know  a  woman.  All  sing- 
ing, dancing,  and  drum-beating  are  considered  sacred  and 
never  uselessly  done."  ' 

Mr.  Chalmers  has  recently  given  to  the  museum  of  the 
London  Missionary  Society  two  bull-roarers,  with  the  fol- 
lowing description:  "  Tiparu,  only  seen  by  a  young  man 
after  initiation  into  manhood,  and  then  pigs  are  killed,  and 
a  large  feast  prepared.  All  women  and  young  people  leave 
the  village  lest  they  should  hear  it  and  die.  Had  great 
difficulty  in  getting  them."  The  larger  of  these  two  meas- 
ures 20  inches  by  5^  inches,  and  is  carved  on  both  sides  with 
scrolls,  which  are,  as  usual,  painted  red,  black,  and  white. 
The  second  one  is  11J-  inches  by  \\  inches;  but  instead  of 
being  ellipsoidal,  it  is  practically  an  elongated  isosceles 
triangle  with  a  pointed  base — one  side  has  a  slightly  carved 
tooth-pattern  along  the  margin  (Fig.  40,  Nos.  10,  11). 

In  connection  with  the  same  ceremonies  at  which  the 
masks  are  employed,  certain  flat,  or  slightly  biconvex, 
ellipsoidal    wooden  objects  are  used,   which  are  generally 

^.Chalmers,  Rept.  Austral.  Assoc.  Advanc.  Set.,  ii.  1890,  p.  313;  cf. 
also,  Pioneering  in  New  Guinea,  1887,  p.  86. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  24 1 

prolonged  at  one  end  into  a  handle,  and  are  perforated  at 
the  other.  They  are  often  adorned  at  the  side  with  vege- 
table fibre.  Their  shape  bears  a  close  resemblance  to  that 
of  a  bull-roarer,  and  I  have  ventured  to  suggest  2  that  they 
may  have  arisen  from  this  implement,  which  we  have  seen 
is  used  in  this  district  during  the  initiation  ceremonies.  An 
objection  to  this  view  might  be  urged  from  the  circum- 
stance that  among  those  people  who  employ  the  bull-roarer 
during  initiation  ceremonies,  the  implement  is  so  sacred 
that  it  may  not  be  exhibited  to  any  woman  or  uninitiate. 
But  these  objects  are  not  actual  bull-roarers,  and  even  if 
they  are  modelled  upon  the  bull-roarers,  their  relatively 
large  size  and  their  decoration  alter  their  character,  and  it 
is  very  improbable  that  any  initiate  would  inform  the  unin- 
structed  that  there  was  any  resemblance  between  the  two 
objects.  These  ceremonial  tablets,  as  I  have  termed  them, 
vary  from  about  twenty  inches  to  sixty  inches  in  length, 
and,  so  far  as  I  know,  without  exception  they  bear  delinea- 
tions of  the  human  form  or  face. 

Very  similar  to  these  ceremonial  tablets  are  some  oval 
wooden  slabs  that  Mr.  Chalmers  has  recently  sent  to  this 
country  from  the  mouth  of  the  Fly  River,  on  which 
are  carved  conventionalised  human  faces,  associated  with 
simple  patterns;  some  he  describes  as  "  gope-gope,  charms 
hung  in  new  houses  for  good  luck  .  .  .  gope,  house 
charm  .  .  .  gope,  figure-head  of  canoe,  gives  good 
passage,  and  is  thought  a  wonderful  charm."  I  suspect 
these,  too,  are  in  reality  bull-roarer  derivatives. 

Mr.  Chalmers  is  also  our  authority  for  the  existence  of 
initiation  ceremonies  in  this  district  at  which  the  bull-roarer, 
burumamaramu,  is  exhibited.  He  says:  "  When  used  all 
women  and  children  leave  the  village  and  go  into  the  bush. 
The  old  men  swing  it  and  show  it  to  the  young  men  when 

1  A.  C.  Haddon,  Dec.  Art,  New  Guinea,  p.  102. 


242  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

the  yams  are  ready  for  digging  (May  and  June)."  The 
name  evidently  means  "  the  mother  of  yams."  '  These 
bull-roarers  are  decorated  with  incised  or  carved  designs. 
At  the  same  occasion  a  wooden  female  image  {uvio-moguru, 
urumuruburu,  etc.)  is  given  to  the  lads  to  be  worn  by  them, 
but  it  must  not  be  seen  by  women  or  children. 

I  found  that  in  the  island  of  Mabuiag,  in  Torres  Straits, 
the  large  carved  and  painted  bull-roarers  (pigii)  (Fig.  40, 
No.  12)  were  formerly  suspended  round  certain  platforms 
that  were  connected  with  the  turtle  fishery.  A  small  bull- 
roarer  (wainis)  was  also  associated  with  this  cult,  but  it  was 
kept  in  the  bush.  Women  were  allowed  to  see  it.  "  It 
was  half-play,"  they  said.  When  the  men  went  out  to 
catch  the  floating  turtle,  they  took  a  bigu  from  the  platform 
and  swung  it  over  the  canoe  preparatory  to  starting.  On 
the  approach  of  the  successful  canoes  a  man  who  had 
stationed  himself  on  a  hill  would  whirl  a  wainis,  and  the 
women  knew  that  the  fishers  had  been  lucky.  At  Moa  a 
man  would  raise  the  wind  by  painting  himself  black  all  over 
and  whirling  a  bull-roarer.2 

In  the  autumn  of  1888,  I  visited  Muralug  (Prince  of  Wales 
Island),  in  Torres  Straits.  The  son  of  the  chief  of  that 
island  was  a  friend  of  mine,  and  when  I  went  to  his  father's 
village  I  determined  to  see  whether  I  could  discover  if  these 
people,  who  are  Papuans,  and  not  Australians,  had  a  know- 
ledge of  the  bull-roarer. 

So  I  took  the  old  man  and  his  son  apart,  and  was  careful 
not  only  to  see  that  nobody  was  close  by,  but  to  speak  in  a 
low  tone  of  voice.     As  I  could  not  speak  their  language, 

1  S.  H.  Ray  and  A.  C.  Haddon,  "  Languages  of  Torres  Straits,"  ii.,  Proc. 
Roy.  Irish  Acad.  (3),  iv.,  1897,  p.  309.  (Buruma,  a  variety  of  yam  ;  maramu, 
mother.) 

2  A.  C.  Haddon,  "The  Ethnography  of  the  Western  Tribe  of  Torres 
Straits,"  Journ.  A  nth.  Inst.,  xix.,  1890,  pp.  406,  427,  432. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  243 

our  means  of  communication  was  the  jargon  English  which 
is  spoken  all  over  the  Pacific. 

I  said  to  him,  "  You  make  him  boy  man  ?  "  (That  is, 
Do  you  have  initiation  ceremonies  in  which  boys  are  made 
into  men  ?  ")  "  Yes,"  he  replied,  "  we  make  him  boy 
man."  "  You  got  thing,  time  you  make  him  boy  man  ?  " 
At  first  the  old  chief  would  say  nothing,  and  looked  stolidly 
ignorant,  but  I  persisted,  and  whirled  my  arm  and  made  a 
whirring  noise,  and  said,  "  I  savvy  that  thing.  You  got 
him  ?  "  This  was  too  much  for  him.  His  surprise  that 
any  white  man  knew  anything  about  it  was  so  evident  that 
he  was  obliged  to  admit  that  they  had  the  implement. 
"  What  name  you  call  him  ?"  The  old  boy  looked  cau- 
tiously all  around,  and  after  satisfying  himself  that  no  one 
could  overhear  him,  he  whispered,  "  Waness."  After  a 
considerable  amount  of  coaxing,  he  promised  to  make  one 
for  me,  evidently  being  satisfied  in  his  own  mind  that  I  was 
an  initiate  of  some  kind  or  other.  The  next  morning  he 
took  me  and  his  son  into  the  bush,  and  took  precautions 
that  he  was  not  followed.  When  some  distance  off  he  pro- 
duced a  bull-roarer,  and  showed  me  how  to  swing  it.  Then 
in  a  secret  and  confidential  manner  he  gave  it  to  me,  making 
me  promise  not  to  show  it  to  any  woman.  I  naturally  took 
this  to  mean  any  native  woman,  and  I  did  not.  I  have 
given  this  specimen  (Fig.  40,  No.  13)  to  the  British  Museum. 
Its  form,  like  that  in  most  countries,  was  a  long  oval,  pointed 
at  both  ends,  and  with  bevelled  edges.  One  end  had  a 
short  bar-like  projection  to  prevent  the  string  from  slipping 
off;  the  latter  was  about  a  yard  in  length,  and  its  other  end 
was  attached  to  a  stick.  It  was  whirled  round  and  round 
over  the  head.  I  was  informed  that  the  waness  was  usually 
ornamented  with  a  central  white  band,  a  red  band  being 
painted  a  short  distance  above  and  below  it. 

A  few  weeks  afterwards  I  was  in  Christianised  Mer  (Mur- 


244 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


ray  Island) — a  small  island  about  one  hundred  and  twenty 
miles  from  Muralug— and  to  my  great  surprise  I  saw  a 
number  of  small  boys  playing  with  similar  bull-roarers. 
These  boys  were  scholars  in  the  Mission  School,  and  had 
been  brought  from  Saibai,  a  low  island  near  the  coast  of 
New  Guinea,  at  the  other  end  of  the  Straits. 

In  one  island  a  bull-roarer  was  too  sacred  to  be  shown  to 
a  woman;  in  another  it  was  a  plaything! 

All  over  Australia  the  bull-roarer  is  regarded  with  re- 
ligious awe,  and  it  is  first  shown  to  lads  at  the  ceremony 
during  which  they  are  initiated  into  manhood.  With  us 
manhood  is  merely  a  question  of  age — with  these  people  it 
is  a  state  of  grace;  unless  a  lad  has  been  initiated,  he  counts 
as  nobody;  he  has  no  tribal  rights,  nor  can  he  perform  any 
ceremony.  No  woman  is  allowed  to  see  the  bull-roarer;  if 
shown  by  a  man  to  a  woman  or  uninitiate  the  punishment 
to  both  is  death.  I  was  informed  that  the  death  penalty 
was  similarly  inflicted  among  the  eastern  tribe  of  Torres 
Straits  if  the  names  were  divulged  of  the  sacred  masks  which 
were  worn  during  the  initiation  ceremonies,  and  if  a  woman 
identified  the  disguised  chief  performers  of  one  of  the  cer- 
emonies "  she  died  that  night."  ' 

In  some  parts  of  Australia  a  deluge  myth  is  associated 
with  the  bull-roarer,  and  the  lads  are  told  that  if  ever  a 
woman  is  allowed  to  see  one  the  earth  will  open,  and  water 
gush  forth  and  submerge  it.  The  old  men  point  spears  at 
the  boys'  eyes,  saying,  "  If  you  tell  this  to  any  woman  you 
will  die;  you  will  see  the  ground  broken  up  and  like  the  sea; 
if  you  tell  this  to  any  woman  or  to  any  child  you  will  be 
killed."  The  Rev.  Mr.  Fison  gives  the  following  tradition: 
"  Some  children  of  the  Kurnai,  in  playing  about,  found  a 
tumdun  (bull-roarer),  which  they  took  home  to  the  camp 

1  A.  C.  Haddon,  "  Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Torres  Straits  Islanders," 
Journ.  Royal  Inst,  of  Great  Britain,  1890. 


Fig.  40.  Comparative  Series  of  Bull-Roarers. 
Bushman  (after  Ratzel) ;  2.  Eskimo  (after  Murdoch),  7IX2;  3.  Apache,  North  America 
(after  Bourke),  8Xi£;  4.  Pima,  North  America  (after  Schmeltz),  15^X1;  5.  Nahuqua, 
Brazil  (after  V.  d.  Steinen),  13X2;  6.  Bororo,  Brazil  (after  V.  d.  Steinen),  15X3J  ;  7.  Pa- 
tani  Malay,  E.  coast  of  Malay  Peninsula  (original,  from  a  description  by  W.  Skeat);  8.  Su- 
matra (after  Schmeltz),  45X4*  ;  9.  New  Zealand  (original),  135X45  ;  10,11.  Toaripi,  British 
New  Guinea  (original),  20X55,  niXij  ;  12.  Mabuhg,  Torres  Straits,  16X3!  ;  13.  Muralug, 
Torres  Straits  (original),  63X15;  14.  Mer,  Torres  Straits  (original),  5X5;  15.  South  Aus- 
tralia (after  Ethendge),  14X15,  both  sides  of  the  same  specimen  are  shown;  16.  Wirad- 
thuri  tribes,  N.  S.W.  (after  Matthews),  134X2,  ;  17.  Clarence  River  tribe,  N.  S.  W.  (after 
Matthews),  5X1;  18.  S.  E.  coast,  N.  S.  W.  (after  Matthews),  13X2^;  19.  Kamilaroi  tribe, 
Weir  River,  Queensland  (after  Matthews),  ii5Xi|. 

245 


246  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

and  showed  the  women.  Immediately  the  earth  crumbled 
away,  and  it  was  all  water,  and  the  Kurnai  were  drowned." 
So  much  has  been  written  of  late  concerning  the  initiation 
ceremonies  in  Australia,  that  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  enter 
into  the  subject  at  any  length.  Matthews,1  who  has  recently 
published  some  very  interesting  observations  on  the  Bora, 
or  initiation  ceremonies  of  the  Kamilaroi  tribe,  records  that 
at  the  main  camp,  during  the  early  part  of  nearly  every 
night,  one  of  the  masters  of  the  ceremonies  would  go  alone 
into  the  bush  a  short  distance  from  the  camp,  and  for  about 
two  hours  would  sound  a  wooden  instrument  which  these 
blacks  called  murrqwan,  which  is  supposed  to  represent  the 
voice  of  Durramoolan,  their  native  name  for  the  evil  spirit, 
who  rules  in  the  night.  During  the  time  the  instrument  re- 
ferred to  was  being  sounded  in  the  adjacent  forest,  the  men 
of  the  tribes  would  dance  and  yell,  and  make  hideous  noises, 
and  all  the  gins  would  sing  and  beat  time,  those  of  each 
tribe  singing  their  own  peculiar  song.      Howitt 2  says: 

"  Tharamulun  s  was  not  everywhere  thought  to  be  a  malevolent 
being,  but  he  was  dreaded  as  one  who  could  severely  punish  the 
trespasses  committed  against  those  tribal  ordinances  and  customs 
whose  first  institution  is  ascribed  to  him.  He,  it  is  said,  taught 
the  Murring  all  the  arts  they  knew;  he  instituted  the  ceremonies 
of  Initiation  of  Youth;  he  made  the  original  niiidji  (the  turndun, 
or  bull-roarer,  of  the  Kurnai);  ordered  the  animal  names  to  be 
assumed  by  men;  and  directed  what  rules  should  be  observed  as 
to  the  food  permitted  or  forbidden  to  certain  persons.  It  was 
taught  to  the  Murring  youths  at  their  initiation  .  .  .  that 
Tharamulun  himself  watched  the  youths  from  the  sky,  prompt  to 
punish,   by  sickness  or   death,   the  breach   of   his   ordinances. 

1  R.  H.  Matthews,  "The  Bora,  or  Initiation  Ceremonies  of  the  Kamilaroi 
Tribe,"  Joum.  Anth.  Inst.,  xxiv.,  1895,  p.  419. 
1  A.  W.  Howitt,  "  On  Some  Australian  Beliefs,"  ibid.,  xiii.,  1883,  p.  192. 
3  Also  called  Thrumulun  or  Daramuliin. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  247 

These  prohibitions  were  only  relaxed  as  the  youths  proved 
themselves  worthy,  and  in  some  cases  appear  to  have  been 
perpetual. 

11  The  knowledge  of  Tharamiilun,  and  his  attributes  and  pow- 
ers, was  only  communicated  to  the  youths  at  their  initiation, 
and  was  regarded  as  something  eminently  secret  and  not  on  any 
account  to  be  divulged  to  women  or  children.  It  is  said  that  the 
women  among  the  Ngarego  and  Wolgal  knew  only  that  a  great 
being  lived  beyond  the  sky,  and  that  he  was  spoken  of  by  them  as 
Papang  (Father).  .  .  .  The  old  men  strenuously  maintained 
that  the  knowledge  of  the  name  of  Tharamul&n  was  imparted  to 
themselves  only  at  their  initiation  by  the  old  men.  This  name  is 
to  them  so  sacred  that  even  in  speaking  to  me  of  it,  when  no  one 
else  was  present  but  ourselves,  the  old  men  have  done  so  in  almost 
whispers,  and  have  used  elliptical  expressions  to  avoid  the  word 
itself,  such  as  '  He,'  '  the  man,'  or  '  the  name  I  told  you  of.'  I 
believe  that  the  dread  of  offending  an  unseen,  powerful,  possibly 
present  spirit,  lies  much  at  the  root  of  the  disinclination  to  utter 
the  name  Tharamiilun.  One  old  Theddora  woman  (the  last  of 
her  tribe)  said,  when  I  asked  her  who  was  Tharamiilun ;  '  He 
lives  up  there  '  (pointing  to  the  sky) ;  '  I  only  know  that;  and  also 
that  when  boys  are  made  young  men  he  comes  down  to  frighten 
them.     I  once  heard  him  coming  with  a  noise  like  thunder.'  " 

In  describing  in  detail  the  initiation  ceremonies  of  the 
Coast  Murring  tribe,  Howitt  says  ] : 

"  The  Mudji  is  held  to  have  been  first  made  and  used  by  Dara- 
mulun,  when  in  the  beginning  of  things  he  instituted  these  cere- 
monies, and  constituted  the  aboriginal  society  as  it  exists.  The 
noise  made  by  it  is  the  voice  of  Daramiilun,  calling  together  the 
initiated  ;  and,  moreover,  it  represents  the  muttering  of  thunder, 
which  is  said  to  be  his  voice  '  calling  to  the  rain  to  fall  and  make 
the  grass  grow  up  green.'  These  are  the  very  words  used  by 
Umbara,  the  minstrel  and  improvisatore  of  his  tribe." 

1  A.  W.  Howitt,  "On  Some  Australian  Ceremonies  of  Initiation,"  Journ. 
Anth.  Inst.,  xiii.,  1884,  p.  446. 


248  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

In  a  later  paper,  Howitt  states  that  "  Showing  the  Grand- 
fat  Jicr  "  is  the  cryptic  phrase  used  to  describe  the  central 
mystery  of  the  Jeraeil,1  or  initiation  ceremonies  of  the  Kur- 
nai  tribe.  In  reality  it  means  the  exhibition  of  the  Tundun, 
and  the  revelation  to  them  of  the  ancestral  beliefs.  The 
Kurnai  have  two  bull-roarers,  a  larger  one  called  the  Tun- 
dun, or  "  the  man,"  and  a  smaller  one  called  Rukut  Tun- 
dun, "  the  woman"  or  "  wife  of  Tundun."  The  larger 
one  is  also  called  "  Grandfather,"  Weintwin  or Muk-Brogan.'1 
In  this  the  Kurnai  differ  from  the  Murring,  who  have  only 
one  bull-roarer,  but  they  agree  with  several  other  Australian 
tribes.  Where  there  is  only  one  the  women  are  totally  ex- 
cluded. 

The  women  and  the  children  are  always  told  that,  at  the 
secret  parts  of  the  Jeraeil,  Tundun  himself  comes  down  to 
"  make  the  boys  into  men."  The  hideous  sounds  which 
the  uninitiated  may  chance  to  hear  from  a  distance  they  are 
told  is  Tundun's  voice,  and  they  are  warned  not  to  leave 
their  camp  while  he  is  about,  lest  he  should  kill  them  with 
his  spears.  Howitt  describes  how  the  newly  initiated  youths 
thoroughly  enter  into  the  fun  of  frightening  the  women, 
and,  having  got  over  their  awe  of  the  bull-roarers,  they 
make  an  outrageous  noise  with  them.  It  sometimes  hap- 
pens that,  during  the  nocturnal  perambulation,  one  of  the 
bull-roarers  becomes  detached  from  its  string,  and  is  thus 
lost.  If,  perchance,  it  is  afterwards  picked  up  by  a  woman 
or  a  child,  their  curiosity  is  satisfied  by  the  statement  that 
it  is  a  "  paddle  belonging  to  Tundun,"  which  he  is  supposed 
to  have  dropped  in  returning  home.     The  shape  of  the  bull- 

1  A.  W.  Howitt,  "  The  Jeraeil,  or  Initiation  Ceremonies  of  the  Kurnai 
Tribe,"  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xiv.,  1885,  pp.  312,  315. 

9  Weintwin  —  father's  father,  or  father's  father's  brother.  All  those  initiated 
at  the  same  Jeraeil  are  Brogan,  or  "  Comrade"  to  each  other.  Muk-Brogan 
is  the  "  Chief  Comrade." 


THE   BULL-ROARER  249 

roarer  is  much  like  that  of  the  little  bark  paddle  which  the 
Kurnai  use  when  sitting  down  in  their  canoes. 

In  his  second  paper  on  the  Bora  ceremony,1  Matthews  re- 
fers several  times  to  the  bull-roarers : 

"Towards  the  close  of  the  rites  two  men  with  bull-roarers 
went  out  into  some  clear  ground  in  front  of  the  novices,  and 
commenced  loudly  sounding  these  instruments.  The  boys  were 
now  directed  to  look  at  the  two  men,  and  were  told  that  all  simi- 
lar noises  that  they  had  ever  heard  were  made  in  this  way. 
Several  of  the  Kooringal  then  walked  in  front  of  the  boys,  with 
uplifted  tomahawks  in  their  hands,  and  told  them  that  if  they 
ever  divulged  this,  or  any  of  the  other  performances  which  they 
had  seen  in  the  bush,  to  the  women  or  the  uninitiated,  they  would 
be  killed.  The  murruwans  were  then  given  into  the  hands  of  the 
novices,  and  they  were  invited  to  inspect  them." 

The  bull-roarer,  or  yuntha,  according  to  Mr.  S.  Gason,2 
is  one  of  the  most  important  secrets  of  the  Died  tribe  of 
Central  Australia,  and  the  knowledge  of  it  is  kept  inviolate 
from  the  women.  The  belief  is,  that  if  the  women  were  to 
see  a  yuntha  which  had  been  used  at  the  ceremonies,  and 
know  the  secrets  of  it,  the  Dieri  tribe  would  ever  afterwards 
be  without  snakes,  lizards,  and  other  such  food.  When  the 
yuntha  is  given  to  the  youth,  he  is  instructed  that  he  must 
twirl  it  round  his  head  when  he  is  out  hunting.  The  Dieri 
think  that  when  the  yuntha  is  handed  to  the  young  Wilyaru 
he  becomes  inspired  by  Muramura.  The  yuntha  is  from  6 
to  9  inches  long,  -±§  inch  thick,  and  2  to  2J  inches  wide;  it 
has  notches  at  each  side,  near  one  end. 

Among  the  Arunta  tribe  of  the  McDonnell  Ranges,  in 
Central  Australia,  the  natives  not  only  employ  the  small 

xJourn.  Anth.  Lnst.,  xxv.,  1896,  p.  336. 

2  A.  W.  Howitt,  "  The  Dieri  and  Other  Kindred  Tribes  of  Central  Australia," 
ibid.,  xx.,  1890,  p.  83. 


250  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

bull-roarer,  irula,  in  the  usual  way,  but  the  lad  on  whom 
circumcision  has  been  performed 

"is  furnished  with  a  bundle  of  large  irula  (not  used  for  making 
a  humming  noise),  which  he  carries  with  him,  and  which  are  be- 
stowed in  order  to  promote  speedy  recovery.  These  sticks 
belong  to  the  class  known  as  Churina.  .  .  .  The  sacred 
stones  (churind)  of  the  tribe  are  flat  stones  of  various  sizes,  of 
soft  material,  such  as  micaceous  rock,  and  generally  engraved  in 
various  ways.  These  stones  are  greatly  valued  by  the  natives  ; 
they  are  handed  down  from  generation  to  generation,  and  the 
women  are  never  allowed  to  see  them  .  .  .  under  penalty  of 
death.  .  .  .  The  humming-stick  (irula)  also  belongs  to  the 
churina  class.  .  .  .  The  marks  on  the  irula  are  evidently  copied 
from  the  marks  on  the  stone  churina.  .  .  .  The  churina  may  be 
described  as  symbolic  of  the  totem."  ' 

Other  references  to  bull-roarers  and  their  uses  will  be 
found  in  Dr.  Stirling's  account  of  the  anthropological  por- 
tion of  the  Horn  expedition  2;  in  two  papers  by  Hardman,3 
who  says:  "  The  whirling-sticks,  mero-mero,  used  to  drown 
the  shrieks  of  the  victim,  as  well  as  the  flint  or  shell-knives 
used  in  the  operation,  are  considered  sacred,  and  are  not  to 
be  looked  upon  by  women  under  pain  of  death."  Probably 
Hardman  was  repeating  only  hearsay  evidence.  Some  ob- 
servers who  have  witnessed  the  ceremony  deny  that  the 
lads  shriek.     A  recent   paper  by  Mr.    R.    Etheridge,4  the 

1  F.  J.  Gillen,  "Notes  on  Some  Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Aborigines 
of  the  McDonnel  Ranges,  Belonging  to  the  Arunta  Tribe,"  Report  on  the  Work 
of  the  Horn  Scientific  Expedition  to  Central  Australia,  pt.  iv.,  Anthropology, 
1896,  pp.  172,  179.  2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  76. 

3  E.  T.  Hardman,  "  Notes  on  a  Collection  of  Native  Weapons  and  Imple- 
ments from  Tropical  Western  Australia  (Kimberley  District),"  Proc.  Roy.  Irish 
Acad.  (3),  i.,  1887,  p.  68  ;  "Notes  on  Some  Habits  and  Customs  of  the  Natives 
of  the  Kimberley  District,  Western  Australia,"  loc.  cit.,  p.  73. 

4  R.  Etheridge,  Junior,  "  On  Circular  and  Spiral  Incised  Ornaments  on 
Australian  Aboriginal  Implements  and  Weapons,"  Records  of  the  Australian 
Museum,  iii.,  1897,  p.  1. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  25  I 

Curator  of  the  Australian  Museum  in  Sydney,  and  papers 
by  E.  Palmer '  and  R.  H.  Matthews  a  may  be  consulted  with 
profit.  The  latter  states  that  the  large  and  small  bull-roarers 
{jnudthega  and  moonibcar)  of  the  Wiradthuri  tribe,  after  they 
are  shown  and  explained  to  the  novices,  are  destroyed  by 
splitting  them  in  pieces,  and  driving  them  into  the  ground 
out  of  sight,  or  they  are  burnt  (p.  311).  The  most  recently 
published  paper  is  one  by  Matthews,3  which  gives  a  useful 
synopsis  of  Australian  bull-roarers  (Fig.  40,  Nos.  16-19). 

More  than  one  account  informs  us  that  a  bull-roarer  is 
one  of  the  credentials  that  a  messenger  carries  with  him 
when  he  is  sent  to  summon  the  class  or  the  tribes  to  an 
initiation  ceremony. 

Having  briefly  surveyed  most  of  the  recorded  accounts  of 
the  bull-roarer  in  various  parts  of  the  world,  it  is  now  time 
to  see  what  may  be  learned  from  these  facts. 

The  distribution  of  this  implement  is  very  wide,  but  by 
no  means  continuous — to  borrow  an  expression  from  the  no- 
menclature of  the  study  of  the  geographical  distribution  of 
animals. 

I  have  drawn  up  the  following  table  in  order  that  we  may 
see  at  a  glance  the  various  purposes  for  which  the  bull-roarer 
is  employed,  and  the  different  places  where  it  is  so  used.  I 
have  marked  with  a  X  those  places  where  that  particular  use 
is  an  universal  practice  (or  very  nearly  so);  the  /  means  that 
some  tribes  only  use  it  for  that  purpose,  and  a  ?  indicates 
that  I  believe  this  to  be,  or  to  have  been,  its  use. 

The  distribution  of  the  bull-roarer  seems  to  preclude  the 
view  that  it  has  had  a  single  origin  and  been  carried  by 

1  E.  Palmer,  "  Notes  on  Some  Australian  Tribes,"  Journ.  Anth.  Lnst.,  xiii., 
p.  295. 

2  R.  H.  Matthews,  "The  Burbung  of  the  Wiradthuri  Tribes,"  ibid.,  xxv., 
1896,  pp.  295,  et  seq. 

z  Ibid.,  "  Bull-roarers  Used  by  Australian  Aborigines,"  ibid.,  xxvii.,  1897, 
p-  52. 


252 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


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254  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

conquest,  trade,  or  migration,  in  the  usual  way.  It  is  im- 
possible to  say  whether  it  formed  part  of  the  religious 
equipment  of  man  in  his  first  wanderings  over  the  earth. 
The  former  view  does  not  appear  to  be  at  all  probable :  it  is 
impossible  to  prove  the  latter  supposition. 

The  implement  itself  is  so  simple  that  there  is  no  reason 
why  it  should  not  have  been  independently  invented  in  many 
places  and  at  diverse  times.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  usually 
regarded  as  very  sacred,  and  as  being  either  a  god  itself,  as 
representing  a  god,  or  as  having  been  taught  to  men  by  a 
god.  Where  this  is  the  case  there  is  every  reason  to  believe 
that  its  use  is  very  ancient.  So  that  it  is  probable  that  in 
certain  areas  it  was  early  discovered  and  has  since  been 
transmitted  to  the  descendants,  and  perhaps  to  the  neigh- 
bours, of  the  original  inventors. 

For  example,  in  America  it  may  belong  to  the  oldest 
stock,  and  have  accompanied  the  peoples  in  their  extension 
over  that  continent,  and  here  and  there  it  may  have  died 
out.  It  is  conceivable  that  it  was  employed  in  Africa 
originally  by  the  Bushmen,  and  possibly  other  of  the  Afri- 
can pigmy  folk.  Its  spread  among  the  Zulus  from  the  Bush- 
men is  not  an  impossibility,  for  we  often  find,  as  I  mention 
in  the  chapter  on  well-worship,  that  a  conquering  race  may 
have  recourse  to  the  magical  practices  of  the  indigenous 
population,  especially  in  the  matters  of  agriculture  and  for 
the  control  of  the  elements.  The  bull-roarer  may  have  arisen 
among  the  Negroes  of  the  West  Coast,  or  been  adopted  by 
them  from  another  race. 

It  is,  however,  very  dangerous  to  generalise  from  such 
imperfect  data  as  we  possess  at  present,  and  doubtless  the 
bull-roarer  will  be  found  to  be  more  prevalent  than  our 
records  show.  It  is,  as  Lang  remarks,  an  instrument  easily 
invented  by  savages,  and  easily  adopted  into  the  ritual  of 
savage  mysteries. 


THE  BULL-ROARER  255 

The  peculiar,  unearthly  noise  made  by  the  bull-roarer  at 
once  marked  it  out  as  something  mysterious.  According  to 
the  size  and  form  or  the  celerity  of  the  whirling,  so  does  the 
sound  vary.  To  men  who  feci  the  world  around  them, 
whose  nature  is  permeated  with  the  kinship  of  things 
animate  and  inanimate,  and  who  perceive  no  real  distinction 
between  life  and  not-life  or  between  different  kinds  of 
beings — to  such  men  the  deep  whirring  sound,  the  buzzing, 
or  the  shriller  whizzing  of  the  bull-roarer,  awakens  strange 
sensations,  which  they  try  to  express  and  formulate.  In 
harmony  with  the  conceptions  of  all  primitive  folk,  they 
would  argue  that  as  the  sounds  resemble  those  of  a  mighty 
rushing  wind,  or  of  wind-driven  rain,  there  must  be  some 
connection — some  heavenly  correspondence,  as  the  mystic 
Swedenborg  expressed  it — between  them.  Professor  Tylor 
has  termed  this  savage  conception  "  sympathetic  magic." 
This,  I  believe,  is  the  explanation  of  the  widely  spread  con- 
nection between  the  bull-roarer  and  the  wind  and  the  rain, 
the  thunder  and  the  lightning. 

The  wind  may  be  raised  to  enable  canoes  to  go  out  fishing, 
and  so  the  bull-roarer  insensibly  may  have  come  in  some  in- 
stances to  be  regarded  as  a  fishing  charm,  and  to  bring  good 
fortune  not  to  the  fishing  alone,  but  good  luck  generally. 

The  same  line  of  thought  is  applicable  to  its  function  of 
producing  the  rain,  which  made  the  grass  green  and  the 
yams  to  grow. 

A  time  arrives  when  men  argue  thus:  What  power  is  it 
that  brings  good  fortune  and  abundant  crops  but  that  of  a 
divine  person  ?  That  the  bull-roarer  should  then  be  ac- 
credited as  a  god  is  by  no  means  to  be  wondered  at.  In- 
deed, it  would  be  illogical  not  to  do  so,  starting  from  our 
premises ;  and  savages  are  not  illogical  or  irrational  beings, 
though  their  arguments  may  lead  them  to  conclusions  that 
seem  strange  to  us. 


256  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

In  its  deification  the  bull-roarer  reaches  its  apotheosis,  its 
highest  status.  Whilst  it  was  being  translated  from  a  magi- 
cal instrument  to  a  divine  person,  or  the  symbol  of  divinity, 
we  may  readily  conceive  that  it  was  removed  from  the  pos- 
sibility of  contamination  by  women.  From  being  tabu  it 
became  sacrosanct,  and  it  took  its  place  among  the  mysteries ; 
and  well  it  might.  The  idea  of  contamination  or  enervation 
by  women  has  been  several  times  discussed  by  anthropolo- 
gists,1 and  so  the  holy  implements  and  the  holy  ceremonies 
are  kept  out  of  possible  danger  by  rendering  it  profanation 
for  women  to  have  anything  to  do  with  them.  No  doubt 
selfish  aims  entered  into  this  restriction,  but  selfish  aims  are 
not  unknown  among  higher  forms  of  religion. 

The  initiation  ceremonies  of  the  lads  are  immensely  im- 
portant, as  they  mark  the  appreciation  of  the  greatest  facts 
of  true  religion  as  we  understand  it — the  brotherhood  of 
man  and  the  communion  of  man  with  his  God.  I  use  this 
term  in  its  highest  significance,  for  the  mystical  union  of  the 
Church  with  Christ  is  a  conception  that  is  taught  by  so- 
called  savages  in  their  initiation  ceremonies.  Brotherhood 
has  reference  only  to  those  of  the  same  communion,  to  those 
who  have  passed  through  the  same  ceremonies.  Even  in 
the  nineteenth  century  many  of  us  find  it  difficult  to  extend 
this  conception.  I  cannot  now  enter  into  the  deeper  signifi- 
cance of  these  initiation  ceremonies,  but  there  is  nothing  to 
wonder  at  in  the  reverence  paid  to  the  symbol  of  the 
"  Grandfather." 

"  By  symbolism,"  writes  Count  Goblet  d'Alviella,2  "  the 
simplest,  the  commonest  objects  are  transformed,  idealised, 

1  A.  E.  Crawley,  "  Sexual  Taboo:  a  Study  in  the  Relations  of  the  Sexes," 
Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xxiv.,  1894-95,  pp.  116,  219,  439.  J.  G.  Frazer,  The 
Golden  Bough,  i.,  1890,  pp.  170,  171.  W.  Robertson  Smith,  The  Religion  of 
the  Semites,  1889,  pp.  435,  462.  E.  Westermarck,  The  History  of  Human 
Marriage,  189 1,  pp.  1 51-156,  541. 

2  Goblet  d'Alviella,   The  Migration  of  Symbols,  1894,  Eng.  trans. 


THE   BULL-ROARER  2$7 

and  acquire  a  new  and,  so  to  say,  an  illimitable  value."  In 
the  Eleusinian  mysteries,  the  author  of  the  Philosophoianena 
relates  that  at  the  initiation  to  the  higher  degree,  "  there 
was  exhibited  as  the  great,  the  admirable,  the  most  perfect 
object  of  mystic  contemplation,  an  ear  of  corn  that  had 
been  reaped  in  silence;  and  two  crossed  lines  suffice  to  re- 
call to  millions  of  Christians  the  redemption  of  the  world 
by  the  voluntary  sacrifice  of  a  god." 

"  It  is  sentiment,  and  above  all  religious  sentiment,  that  resorts 
largely  to  symbolism,  in  order  to  place  itself  in  more  intimate 
communication  with  the  being,  or  abstraction,  it  desires  to  ap- 
proach. To  that  end  men  are  everywhere  seen  either  choosing 
natural  or  artificial  objects  to  remind  them  of  the  Great  Hidden 
One,  or  themselves  imitating,  in  a  systematic  manner,  the  acts 
and  deeds  they  attribute  to  Him — which  is  a  way  of  participating 
in  His  life." 

It  is  the  fate  of  religious  symbols  to  lose  their  pristine 
significance,  and  this  has  in  places  overtaken  the  bull-roarer, 
so  that  it  has  in  various  localities  degenerated  into  a  child's 
plaything.  Numerous  analogous  degenerations  of  symbols 
will  be  found  in  a  study  of  decorative  art. 

Dr.  Codrington  has  revealed,  among  the  Melanesians,  not 
only  sacred  secret  societies,  which  doubtless  had  their  origin 
in  a  clan  system  similar  to  that  of  Australia,  but  various 
stages  in  the  disintegration  of  those  societies,  which  event- 
ually come  to  be  little  more  than  clubs.  Some  of  these 
secret  societies  take  upon  themselves  judicial  or  predatory 
functions,  and  for  law  and  order,  or  for  purely  selfish  aims, 
they  terrorise  non-members,  and  especially  the  women. 
The  bull-roarer,  as  I  have  already  indicated,  is  used  for 
these  baser  ends. 

The  weird  sound  of  the  whirling  bull-roarer  is  suggestive 
of  unseen  forces,  and  so  it  naturally  becomes  associated  in 


258  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

men's  minds  with  spirits  or  ghosts.  It  may  thus  come  to 
be  a  means  of  communication  with  the  spirits,  a  use  to 
which  it  is  put  in  West  Africa  and  Melanesia. 

There  is  one  collateral  use  of  the  bull-roarer  which  is  of 
interest.  I  have  quoted  Mrs.  Gomme's  and  Figura's  de- 
scriptions of  its  effects  on  cattle.  The  poor  animals  evi- 
dently mistake  the  noise  for  the  buzzing  of  the  gad-fly  or 
bot-fly,  and  instinctively  they  take  to  flight.  I  do  not 
know  whether  the  name  "  bull-roarer  "  has  anything  to  do 
with  this,  but  I  suspect  that  this  is  the  explanation  of  the 
statements  that  the  Bushmen  use  it  as  a  clapper  for  driving 
game  and  as  a  charm  in  hunting.  It  certainly  would  prove 
a  useful  instrument  if  these  little  hunters  could  by  its  means 
drive  their  game  so  crazy  that  they  would  not  know  which 
way  to  turn,  and  it  would  also  prove  very  serviceable  in 
their  raids  on  the  cattle  of  the  Zulus. 

Most  likely  we  shall  never  know  for  certain  whether  the 
early  savages  of  Northern  Europe  possessed  the  bull-roarer; 
but  there  is  every  probability  in  favour  of  the  view  that  if 
such  were  the  case,  it  had  to  them  a  magical  and  mystical  sig- 
nificance, as  we  have  seen  it  has  amongst  other  primitive  folk. 

The  evidence  that  Andrew  Lang  has  brought  forward 
supports  this  conclusion.  Even  in  the  most  cultured  period 
of  Greek  civilisation  there  were  certain  sacred  mysteries, 
during  the  celebration  of  which  the  initiates  danced,  prob- 
ably in  a  nude  condition,  as  we  are  told  their  bodies  were 
daubed  with  clay,  while  they  whirled  the  bull-roarer.  The 
parallelism  with  the  initiation  ceremonies  of  the  Australians  is 
complete.  It  is  obvious  that  these  and  many  other  elements 
in  the  religious  practices  and  beliefs  of  the  Greeks  were  sur- 
vivals of  savagery.  The  religion  of  the  fathers  is  long  con- 
served as  ceremonial  practice  by  the  piety  of  the  children. 

This  insignificant  toy  is  perhaps  the  most  ancient,  widely 
spread,  and  sacred  religious  symbol  in  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  SINGING  GAMES  OF  CHILDREN 

IN  country  places,  or  even  in  our  towns,  groups  of  boys 
and  girls,  or  more  frequently  of  girls  only,  may  be  seen 
dancing  in  a  ring,  walking  in  rows,  or  performing  certain 
actions,  and  singing  all  the  while.  These  singing  games  are 
now  dying  out,  but  in  some  places  they  are  being  replaced 
by  other  singing  games  of  a  purely  artificial  character,  which 
are  taught  in  school.  The  latter  have  no  interest  for  us, 
but  it  will  be  found  that  many  of  the  former  illustrate 
curious  phases  in  the  history  of  man. 

In  the  last  chapter,  when  speaking  of  the  ceremonies  in 
which  the  bull-roarer  was  employed,  I  pointed  out  that 
dancing  is  an  important  element  in  all  the  ceremonies  of 
savages.  The  dancing  varies  much  in  character;  in  no  case 
does  it  resemble  the  modern  "  round  "  or  "  fast  "  dances, 
but  there  is  a  close  similarity  between  the  old-fashioned 
"  square  "  dances  and  the  dances  of  savages.  One  may  say 
without  hesitancy  that  "  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  "  and  other 
country  dances,  as  well  as  the  essential  figures  of  the  quad- 
rilles and  lancers,  are  survivals  of  ancient  dances,  the  two 
latter  having  been  greatly  modified  by  professional  dancers. 

In  a  lecture  before  the  Cambridge  Antiquarian  Society, 
in  March,  1897,  Sir  E.  Clarke  pointed  out  that  it  has  been 
alleged  in  various  quarters  that  our  English  country  dance 
is    derived    from    the    French   contredanse.     John   Wilson 

259 


200  THE   STUD  Y  OF  MAN 

Croker  wrote:  "  Our  country  dances  are  a  corruption  in 
name  and  a  simplification  of  figure  of  the  French  contre- 
danse." De  Quincey,  in  his  Life  and  Manners,  Dr.  Busby, 
in  his  Dictionary  of Music,  and  Archbishop  Trench,  in  Eng- 
lish :  Past  and  Present,  adopted  the  same  view.  On  the 
other  hand,  Weaver  wrote  in  his  History  of  Dancing  (17 12): 
"  Country  dances  are  a  dancing  the  peculiar  growth  of  this 
nation,  tho'  now  transplanted  into  almost  all  the  Courts  of 
Europe."  Feuillet,  in  a  little  book  published  in  Paris  in 
1706,  entitled  Rccneil  de  Contredanses,  says:  "  Les  Anglais 
en  sont  les  premiers  inventeurs. ' '  Nearly  all  the  dances  in  the 
volume  are  English.  For  instance,  the  famous  "  Green 
Sleeves  "  appears  as  Les  Manches  Vertes,  and  nearly  all  the 
versions  correspond  with  those  in  John  Playford's  Dancing 
Master  of  1686  (7th  edition).  Littre,  in  his  classical  Dic- 
tionnaire  de  la  Langue  Francaise,  admits  that  the  contredanse 
is  a  kind  of  old-fashioned  English  dance  imported  into 
France  under  the  Regency  between  about  1723  and  1745. 
Clarke  says : 

"  The  contredanse  was,  in  fact,  first  introduced  to  Paris  in  1745, 
when  it  was  given  in  a  ballet  entitled  '  Des  Fetes  de  Polymnie,' 
by  Rameau.  Its  success  was  so  great  that  it  was  afterwards  em- 
ployed in  all  the  future  divertissements.  It  is  clear,  therefore, 
that  the  French  borrowed  the  country  dance  from  us.  Event- 
ually they  turned  it  into  the  quadrille,  which  was  imported  into 
England  about  eighty  years  ago,  and  made  a  great  sensation 
when  first  danced  at  '  Almacks  '  by  the  famous  Lady  Jersey  antl 
her  entourage  in  18 15."  ' 

The  following  extract  from  Hey  wood's  A  Woman  Kild 
with  Kindness  (1607) 3  will  illustrate  the  variety  of  the 
dances  that  were  formerly  indulged  in : 

1  Cf.  also  Mrs.  Lilly  Grove  (Mrs.  J.  G.  Frazer),  Dancing,  in  The  Badminton 
Library,  1 895,  p.  280. 

2  Thomas  Hey7vood's  Dramatic  Works,  vol.  ii.,  pp.  96-98.  Ed.  Pearson, 
1874.     (I  have  uniformly  put  all  the  names  of  the  dances  into  italics.) 


THE   SINGING   GAMES   OF  CHILDREN  26 1 

"Enter  Nicke  and  Ienkin,  Iacke    Slime,  Roger   Brickbat, 
with  Countrey  Wenches,  and  two  or  three  Musitians. 

Slime.     Come,  what  shall  it  be  ?     Pogero? 

Iex.     Pogero,  no  ;  we  will  dance,  The  Beginni?ig  of  the  World. 

Sisly.     I  loue  no  dance  so  well  as  yohn,  come  kisse  mee  now. 

Nic.  I  that  haue  ere  now  deseru'd  a  cushion,  call  for  the 
Cushion  Da?ice. 

Roger.     For  my  part  I  like  nothing  so  wel  as  Tom  Tyler. 

Iexk.     No,  wee'l  haue  the  Hunting  of  the  Fox. 

Slime.     The  Hay,  the  Hay,  there  's  nothing  like  the  Hay. 

Nic.     I  haue  saide,  I  do  say,  and  I  will  say  againe. 

Iexk.     Euery  man  agree  to  haue  it  as  Nicke  says. 

All.     Content. 

Nic.     It  hath  bene,  it  now  is,  and  it  shall  be. 

Sisly.     What,  Master  Nichlas,  what  ? 

Nic.     Put  on  your  smocke  a  Monday. 

Iex.  So  the  dance  will  come  cleanly  oft  :  come,  for  God's 
sake  agree  to  something  ;  if  you  like  not  that,  put  it  to  the  Mu- 
sitians, or  let  me  speake  for  all,  and  wee'l  haue  Sellenger's  Pound. 

All.     That,  that,  that." 

In  the  fine  old  song,  Come,  Lassies  and  Lads •,  we  find  the 
same  love  of  dancing. 

"  You  lassies  and  lads  take  leave  of  your  dads, 
And  away  to  the  May-pole  hie, 
There  every  he  has  got  him  a  she, 
And  the  minstrel  's  standing  by  : 
For  Willy  has  got  his  Gill,  and  Johnny  has  his  Joan, 
To  jig  it,  jig  it,  jig  it,  jig  it,  jig  it  up  and  down. 

"  '  Begin,'  says  Hal, — \  Aye,  aye,'  says  Mall, 
'We'll  lead  up  Packi/ig  ton's  Pound'  ; 
No,  no,'  says  Noll,  and  so  says  Doll, 
'  We  'll  first  have  Sellenger's  Pound.' 
Then  every  man  began  to  foot  it  round  about, 
And  every  girl  did  jet  it,  jet  it,  jet  it  in  and  out. 


262  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  Then  after  an  hour  they  went  to  a  bow'r, 
And  played  for  ale  and  cakes, 
And  kisses  too,  until  they  were  due — 
The  lassies  held  the  stakes. 
The  girls  did  then  begin  to  quarrel  with  the  men, 
And  bade  them  take  their  kisses  back, 
And  give  them  their  own  again. 

"  Now  there  they  did  stay  the  whole  of  the  day, 
And  tired  the  fiddler  quite 
With  dancing  and  play,  without  any  pay, 
From  morning  until  night. 
They  told  the  fiddler  then,  they  'd  pay  him  for  his  play, 
And  each  a  twopence,  twopence,  twopence, 
Gave  him,  and  went  away." 

One  of  the  most  favourite  games  of  young  men  and 
maidens  in  the  Middle  Ages  was  that  known  as  "  Barley 
Break,"  or  "  The  Last  Couple  in  Hell." 

"  The  spring  clade  all  in  gladness 
Doth  laugh  at  winter's  sadness, 
And  to  the  bagpipe's  sound 
The  maids  tread  out  their  ground. 

"  Fy,  then,  why  are  we  musing, 
Youth's  sweet  delight  refusing  ? 
Say,  dainty  nymph,  and  speak, 
Shall  we  play  Barley  Break  ?  " 

— Old  Song. 

It  appears  from  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  description  in  the 
Arcadia  that  the  game  was  played  by  three  couples,  each  of 
a  youth  and  a  maid,  one  couple  standing  at  each  end  of  the 
area  and  the  third  remaining  in  the  centre.  The  oblong 
playing-ground  was  divided  transversely  into  three  plots,  of 
which  the  central  one  was  called  "  hell."     The  mating  was 


THE   SINGING   GAMES  OF  CHILDREN  263 

determined  by  lot,  and  the  last  pair  mated  were  obliged  to 
take  the  central  plot  or  "  hell,"  and  saluted  each  other  by 
a  kiss.  This  pair  were  required  to  pursue  with  joined  hands, 
while  the  others  were  at  liberty  to  separate.  Any  maid 
caught  replaced  the  maid,  and  any  youth,  the  youth  of  the 
central  couple. 

"  She  went  abroad,  thereby, 
At  Barley-brake  her  sweet,  swift  foot  to  try     .     .     . 
A  field  they  goe,  where  manie  lookers  be     .     .     . 
Then  couples  three  be  streight  allotted  there, 
They  of  both  ends  the  middle  two  doe  flie, 
The  two  that  in  mid-place,  Hell  called  were, 
Must  striue  with  waiting  foot,  and  watching  eye 
To  catch  of  them,  and  them  to  hell  to  beare, 
That  they,  as  well  as  they,  Hell  may  supplye  : 

Like  some  which  seek  to  salue  their  blotted  name 
With  others  blot,  till  all  doe  taste  of  shame. 

"  There  may  you  see,  soone  as  the  middle  two 
Doe  coupled  towards  either  couple  make, 
They  false  and  fearfull,  doe  their  hands  undoe, 
Brother  his  brother,  friend  doth  friend  forsake, 
Heeding  himselfe,  cares  not  how  fellow  doe, 
But  of  a  stranger  mutuall  helpe  doth  take  : 

As  periur'd  cowards  in  aduersitie 

With  sight  of  feare  from  friends  to  fremb'd  doe  flie."  ' 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  origin  of  this  now  obsolete 
game,  it  was  played  in  the  seventeenth  century  for  purely 
exhilarating  amusement  for  both  sexes,  in  the  same  way  as 
lawn  tennis  was  until  very  recently. 

In  looking  through  a  large  collection  of  the  singing  games 
of  children,   it  will   be  obvious,   as  Mr.    Newell,   the  well- 

1  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  The  Countess  of  Pembroke's  Arcadia  ("  now  the  sixt 
time  pvblished  "  ),  London,  1623,  lib.  i.,  p.  87,  "  Song  of  Lamon." 


264  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

known  American  folklorist  points  out,  that  many  were  not 
composed  by  children. 

"  They  were  formerly  played,  as  in  many  countries  they  are 
still  played,  by  persons  of  marriageable  age,  or  even  by  mature 
men  and  women.  The  truth  is  that  in  past  centuries  all  the 
world,  judged  by  our  present  standard,  seems  to  have  been  a  lit- 
tle childish.  The  maids  of  honour  of  Queen  Elizabeth's  day,  if 
we  may  credit  the  poets,  were  devoted  to  the  game  of  tag,  and 
conceived  it  a  waste  of  time  to  pass  in  idleness  hours  which 
might  be  employed  in  that  pleasure,  with  which  Diana  and  her 
nymphs  were  supposed  to  amuse  themselves." ' 

Court  dames  and  cottage  damsels  alike  played  these  sing- 
ing games  in  the  breezy  days  of  Good  Queen  Bess.  How 
the  puritanical  glacier  of  a  later  time  swept  away  the  rich- 
ness of  life  and  left  bare  the  naked  rock-bed  of  stern  reality, 
we  of  the  present  generation  know  only  too  well. 

Those  unconscious  keepers  of  archaic  archives — our  village 
children — have  retained  some  of  the  romping  games  of  the 
"  grown  ups  "  of  "  Merrie  England  "  ;  but  also  in  some  of 
the  singing  games,  played  by  the  roadside,  can  we  trace  de- 
generate and  fragmentary  survivals  of  the  social  life,  cere- 
monies, and  religious  practices  of  our  savage  ancestors. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  enter  into  a  disquisition  on  danc- 
ing, much  as  I  should  like  to,  for  the  subject  is  one  of 
peculiar  interest  and  of  deep  significance.  Many  valuable 
contributions  to  the  subject  have  been  made  by  Mrs.  J.  G. 
Frazer,2  Herbert  Spencer,3  and  others,  amongst  whom  I 
would  specially  mention  Grosse,4  who  has  eloquently  argued 
that  dancing  has  been  no  mere  pastime,  "  La  joie  de  vivre, 

1  W.  W.  Newell,  Games  and  Songs  of  American  Children,  New  York,  1884,  p.  5. 

2  Mrs.  Lilly  Grove,  The  Badminton  Library :  Dancing,  1895. 

3  Herbert  Spencer,  "Professional  Institutions:  iii.,   Dancer  and  Musician," 
The  Contemporary  Review,  lxviii.,  1895,  p.  114. 

4  E.  Grosse,  Die  Anfange  der  Kunst,  1894. 


THE   SINGING   GAMES   OF   CHILDREN  20  5 

ohe,  ohe'"  not  even  solely  a  magical  pantomime,  but  that 
it  has  had  a  civilising  effect  by  making  numbers  of  people 
meet  in  amity  and  move  rhythmically  in  accord.  On  this 
co-ordinating  effect  of  the  tribal  dance  Grosse  lays  great 
stress,  and  believes  that  it  has  been  one  of  the  chief  factors 
in  the  elevation  of  man.  With  Herbert  Spencer,  he  delves 
yet  deeper  and  sees  in  the  vigorous  rhythmical  movements 
the  rationale  of  dancing. 

I  do  not  intend  making  an  analysis  or  a  classification  of 
the  singing  games  of  children,  but  will  content  myself  with 
taking  a  few  that  have  interested  me.  The  first  two,  "  The 
Farmer's  Den  "  and  "  When  I  was  a  Naughty  Girl,"  ap- 
pear to  be  simple  amusements  with  nothing  special  at  the 
back  of  them. 

In  a  few  instances  I  have  given,  or  merely  alluded  to, 
games  which  in  some  cases  are  evidently  versions  of  the 
same  game,  while  in  others  they  are  similar  games  which 
have  apparently  had  an  independent  origin.  We  are  here 
brought  face  to  face  with  a  crucial  question  in  folk-lore. 
Broadly  speaking,  students  of  folk-lore  range  themselves 
into  two  camps:  the  adherents  of  one  school  seek  to  ex- 
plain all  similarities  of  custom  or  tale  by  borrowing  or  trans- 
mission ;  the  followers  of  what  is  sometimes  called  the 
anthropological  school  are  impressed  with  the  essential 
solidarity  of  mankind,  and  argue  that  under  similar  condi- 
tions men  of  a  given  plane  of  culture  will  do,  think,  and  say 
very  much  alike.  There  is  no  need  to  take  either  extreme. 
Every  instance  must  be  studied  independently,  and  all  the 
available  evidence  must  be  collected  and  weighed  impartially 
from  both  points  of  view  before  a  reliable  conclusion  can  be 
arrived  at.  The  similarity  in  two  or  more  widely  separated 
districts  of  a  complex  custom  or  tale,  is  very  good  evidence 
in  favour  of  borrowing,  but  in  a  simple  case  the  matter  is 
by  no  means  easy  to  decide. 


266  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

As  an  example  of  the  distribution  of  two  singing  games 
which  are  so  similar  that  they  must  have  had  a  common 
origin,  I  will  take  the  following.  The  first  version  was  col- 
lected by  my  elder  daughter  at  Auchencairn  in  Kirkcud- 
brightshire ;  the  second  was  given  to  me  as  coming  from  Basel. 
It  is  a  far  cry  from  South-west  Scotland  to  Switzerland,  and 
the  explanation  appears  to  be  that  it  is  an  ancient  Teutonic 
game. 

THE   FARMER'S  DEN 

The  players  dance  in  a  ring,  singing,  round  one  child,  who 
stands  in  the  centre  of  the  circle. 

"  The  farmer  's  in  his  den,  the  farmer  's  in  his  den, 
For  it 's  oh  !  my  dearie,  the  farmer  's  in  his  den. 

"  For  the  farmer  takes  a  wife,  for  the  farmer  takes  a  wife, 
For  it 's  oh  !  my  dearie,  the  farmer  takes  a  wife." 

[The  child  then  chooses  a  "  wife  "  from  the  circle,  who  then 
goes  into  the  ring  along  with  the  "  farmer."  The  remainder 
again  dance  round,  singing  :] 

"  For  the  wife  takes  a  child,  for  the  wife  takes  a  child, 
For  it 's  oh  !  my  dearie,  the  wife  takes  a  child." 

[The  "  wife  "  then  chooses  a  "  child  "  from  the  circle,  and  so 
on,  as  before.] 

"  For  the  child  takes  a  nurse,  for  the  child  takes  a  nurse, 
For  it 's  oh  !  my  dearie,  the  child  takes  a  nurse." 

[Selection  as  before.] 

"  For  the  nurse  takes  a  dog,  for  the  nurse  takes  a  dog, 
For  it  's  oh  !  my  dearie,  the  nurse  takes  a  dog." 


THE   SINGING   GAMES  OF  CHILDREN  267 

[Then  they  all  join  in  singing  :] 

"  For  we  all  clap  the  dog,  for  we  all  clap  the  dog, 
For  it  's  oh  !  my  dearie,  we  all  clap  the  dog." 

[And  while  they  are  singing  they  pat  the  "  dog's  "  back.] 

The  Swiss  game  is  as  follows : 

The  children  are  divided  into  two  parties  and  stand  oppo- 
site one  another.     One  party,  advancing,  sings : 

"  Once  a  peasant  drove  into  the  forest,  Hurrah  Viktoria  ! 
Once  a  peasant  drove  into  the  forest." 

[And  retreat  when  singing  the  last  line.] 

[The  other  side  advances  singing  :] 

u  The  peasant  took  a  wife,  Hurrah  Viktoria  ! 
The  peasant  took  a  wife. 

"  The  woman  took  a  child,  Hurrah  Viktoria  ! 
The  woman  took  a  child. 

"  The  child  took  a  nurse,  Hurrah  Viktoria  ! 
The  child  took  a  nurse. 

*'  The  nurse  took  a  man-servant,  Hurrah  Viktoria  ! 
The  nurse  took  a  man-servant. 

"  The  man-servant  took  a  dog,  Hurrah  Viktoria  ! 
The  man-servant  took  a  dog. 

"  The  dog  took  a  sausage,  Hurrah  Viktoria  ! 
The  dog  took  a  sausage. 

u  The  peasant  separated  from  his  wife,  Hurrah  Viktoria  ! 
The  woman  separated  from  the  child, 
The  child  separated  from  the  nurse." 


268  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

And  so  on;  when  saying  the  word  "  separated  "  the  second 
party  chooses  a  child  for  the  first  one,  until  only  one  child 
is  left,  who  is  the  "  sausage."  They  all  form  a  circle  round 
her,  dancing  and  clapping  their  hands,  and  singing: 

"  The  sausage  is  left  alone,  Hurrah  Viktoria  !  " 

The  Scottish  version  is  evidently  an  abbreviated  one.  It 
looks,  too,  as  if  the  Swiss  game  should  commence  with  one 
child  (the  "  peasant  "),  facing  a  row,  and  that  at  each  stanza 
a  child  should  pass  from  the  latter  to  the  former,  until  the 
break  comes  in  the  song  when  the  action  is  reversed  ;  finally 
the  "  sausage  "  alone  remains. 

What  appears  to  be  merely  an  imitative  child's  singing 
game  is  the  one  known  as  "  When  I  was  a  Naughty  Girl." 

The  following  is  a  version  I  have  collected  near  Cam- 
bridge, and  as  the  ring  of  children  marched  round,  following 
one  another  in  a  circle,  they  imitated  the  actions  suggested 
by  the  words.  It  was  a  pretty  little  comedy  to  see  them 
walking  demurely  when  they  were  good  girls,  or  shrugging 
their  shoulders  and  wriggling  their  bodies  when  they  were 
naughty,  walking  arm  in  arm  when  they  were  courting,  and 
later  dangling  an  imaginary  baby. 

"When  I  was  a  naughty  girl,  a  naughty  girl,  a  naughty  girl, 
When  I  was  a  naughty  girl,  and  this  way  went  I." 
\_Pantomime  :  shrugging  shoulders^] 

"  When  I  was  a  good  girl,  a  good  girl,  a  good  girl, 
When  I  was  a  good  girl,  and  this  way  went  I." 
\_Pantomime  :  folding  arms  and  walking  soberly."] 

"  When  I  was  a  teacher,  a  teacher,  a  teacher, 
When  I  was  a  teacher,  and  this  way  went  I." 
[Pantomime:  beating  time  or  action  of  whacking^] 


THE   SINGING   GAMES  OF  CHILDREN  269 

"When  I  went  a  courting,  a  courting,  a  courting, 
When  I  went  a  courting,  and  this  way  went  I." 
[Pantomime :  walking  arm  i?i  arm  in  pairs] 

"  When  I  had  a  baby,  a  baby,  a  baby, 
When  I  had  a  baby,  and  this  way  went  I." 

[Pantomime  :  doubling  up  apron  and  dandling  it] 

"  When  my  baby  died,  baby  died,  baby  died, 
When  my  baby  died,  how  I  did  cry." 
[Pantomime :  crying.'] 

"  When  my  father  beat  me,  father  beat  me,  father  beat  me, 
When  my  father  beat  me,  and  this  way  went  he." 
[Pantomime  :  hitting  one  another  on  backs] 

*[  When  my  father  died,  father  died,  father  died, 
When  my  father  died,  how  I  did  laugh." 

[Pantomime :  laughing] 

Mr.  Newell  '  says  that  this  game  is  closely  paralleled  in 
France  and  Italy,  and  even  on  the  extreme  limits  of  Euro- 
pean Russia;  but  wherever  there  are  children,  they  will 
imitate  the  doings  of  their  elders,  and  while  in  some  games 
we  may  lay  stress  upon  their  geographical  distribution,  in 
others  this  probably  is  of  no  moment. 

Probably  an  analogous  singing  pantomime  is  the  follow- 
ing, which  was  given  to  me  by  a  German  girl.  The  children 
form  a  ring,  and  as  they  sing  they  make  appropriate 
gestures. 

"  Would  you  know  how  the  peasant, 
Would  you  know  how  the  peasant, 
Sows  his  oats  ? 

"  Look  !  like  this  the  peasant, 
Look  !  like  this  the  peasant, 
Sows  his  oats  in  the  field." 
1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  88. 


270  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

The  double  rhymes  are  repeated  for :  "  Reaping  oats," 
"  Threshing  oats,"  and  "  Winnowing  oats." 

At  first  sight  this  game  appears  to  be  similar  to  a  common 
English  rhyming  game  known  as  "  Oats,  Beans,  and  Bar- 
ley " ;  but  a  further  study  of  the  latter  rather  leads  one  to 
the  supposition  that  it  had  originally  a  magical  significance. 

I  have  seen  the  following  game  played  by  the  children  of 
Girton,  a  village  near  Cambridge,  and  I  would  like  to  take 
this  opportunity  of  thanking  Mrs.  Lawrence,  of  the  Rectory, 
for  the  help  she  has  given  me  in  collecting  the  games  of 
that  village. 

The  girls  who  played  it  walked  round  in  a  circle,  and 
they  made  appropriate  gestures  while  singing  the  second 
verse  in  illustration  of  the  words  of  the  song.  After  all 
had  given  one  stamp  of  the  feet  and  a  clap  of  the  hands, 
and  had  turned  round,  they  formed  a  ring  during  the  sing- 
ing of  the  third  verse ;  two  enter  this  and  kiss  one  another 
kneeling,  while  the  encircling  chorus  sing  the  last  verse. 

"  Oats  and  beans  and  barley  grow, 
You  or  I  or  anyone  know, 
You  or  I  or  anyone  know 
Where  oats  and  beans  and  barley  grow.1 

"  First  the  farmer  sows  his  seed, 
Stands  awhile  and  takes  his  heed  [or  ease],8 
Stamps  his  foot  and  claps  his  hand, 
And  turns  around  to  view  the  land. 

"Waiting  for  a  partner, 
Open  the  ring, 
And  take  one  in, 
Waiting  for  a  partner. 

1  This  verse  evidently  means  that  no  one  knows  how  the  corn  grows. 

8  The  one  rhymes  and  the  other  does  not,  but  the  children  incline  to  M  ease." 


THE   SINGING   GAMES  OF  CHILDREN  271 

"  Now  you  're  married  you  must  obey, 
You  must  be  true  to  all  you  say, 
You  must  be  kind  and  very  good, 
And  help  your  wife  to  chop  the  wood." 

Mr.  Newell  has  collected  several  examples  from  the  United 
States. 

"  In  the  early  part  of  the  century,"  he  informs  us,  "the  essen- 
tial stanza  went  thus  in  New  Hampshire  : 

"  '  Thus  my  father  sows  his  seed, 
Stands  erect,  and  takes  his  ease, 
Stamps  his  foot,  and  claps  his  hands, 
Whirls  about,  and  thus  he  stands.' 

"  The  Swedish  quatrain  is  nearly  the  same : 

11  4 1  had  a  father,  he  sowed  this  way, 

And  when  he  had  done,  he  stood  this  way  ; 

He  stamped  with  his  foot,  he  clapped  with  his  hand, 

He  turned  about,  he  was  so  glad.' 

"  The  French  rhyme,  by  its  exact  correspondence,  proves  the 
great  antiquity  of  the  formula: 

"  '  Qui  veut  ouir,  qui  veut  savoir, 
Comment  on  seme  l'aveine  ? 
Mon  pere  la  semait  ainsi, 
Puis  il  se  reposait  a  demi ; 
Frappe  du  pied,  puis  de  la  main, 
Un  petit  tour  pour  ton  voisin  ; 

Aveine,  aveine,  aveine, 
Que  le  Bon  Dieu  t'amene  ! '  " 

Fauriel,  in  his  history  of  Provencal  literature,  alludes  to 
this  song,  and  considers  it  to  be  derived  from,  and  to  repre- 
sent, choral  dances  of  the  Greek  rustics  of  Massil  (Mar- 
seilles).    He  says  (I  again  quote  from  Newell,  p.  83): 

"  The  words  of  the  song  described  an  action,  a  succession  of 
different  situations,  which  the  dancers  reproduced  by  their  ges- 


272  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

tures.  The  song  was  divided  into  many  stanzas,  and  terminated 
by  a  refrain  alike  for  all.  The  dancers  acted  or  gesticulated  only 
to  imitate  the  action  or  situation  described  in  each  stanza  ;  at  the 
refrain  they  took  each  other  by  the  hand  and  danced  a  round, 
with  a  movement  more  or  less  lively.  There  are  everywhere 
popular  dances  derived  from  these,  which  more  or  less  resemble 
them.  ...  I  remember  to  have  seen  in  Provence  some  of  these 
dances,  of  which  the  theme  seems  to  be  very  ancient — one,  among 
the  rest,  imitating  successively  the  habitual  actions  of  a  poor 
labourer,  working  in  his  field,  sowing  his  wheat  or  oats,  mowing, 
and  so  on  to  the  end.  Each  of  the  numerous  couplets  of  the 
song  was  sung  with  a  slow  and  dragging  motion,  as  if  to  imitate 
the  fatigue  and  the  sullen  air  of  the  poor  labourer  ;  and  the  re- 
frain was  of  a  very  lively  movement,  the  dancers  then  giving  way 
to  all  their  gaiety." 

The  French,  Italian,  and  Spanish  versions  of  this  game 
also  represent  a  series  of  actions,  sowing,  reaping,  etc.,  of 
which  our  rhyme  has  retained  only  one  stanza. 

We  must  always  keep  apart  in  our  minds  games  which 
have  filtered  down  from  adults  to  children,  and  those  which 
the  latter  may  be  supposed  to  have  invented  themselves. 
At  first  sight  one  would  have  imagined  that  "  Oats,  pease, 
beans,  and  barley  grows,"  as  played  on  English  village 
greens  or  by  children  in  the  United  States,  was  merely  an 
imitative  game,  analogous  to  "  keeping  house,"  playing 
with  dolls,  playing  at  soldiers,  and  the  like;  but  we  find  "  it 
is  properly  a  dance  rather  of  young  people  than  of  children. ' ' 
We  know  it  was  an  ancient  dance,  as  "it  was  played  by 
Froissart  (born  1337)  and  by  Rabelais  (born  1483);  while  the 
general  resemblance  of  the  song  in  the  countries  of  Sweden, 
Germany,  British  Islands,  France,  Spain,  Italy,  and  Sicily 
proves  that  in  the  five  centuries  through  which  we  thus 
trace  it,  even  the  words  have  undergone  little  change." 

It  is  not  impossible  that  it  was  merely  a  game  of  playing 


THE    SINGING   GAMES   OF  CHILDREN  273 

at  work  indulged  in  by  young  people,  but  another  explana- 
tion has  been  suggested  by  Newell '  which  has  much  to 
recommend  it.      He  says: 

"  The  lines  of  the  French  refrain, 

'  Oats,  oats,  oats, 
May  the  good  God  prosper  you  ! ' 

and  the  general  form  of  the  dance  suggest  that  the  song  may 
probably  have  had  a  religious  symbolic  meaning,  and  formed 
part  of  rustic  festivities  designed  to  promote  the  fertility  of  the 
fields,  an  object  which  undoubtedly  formed  the  original  purpose 
of  the  May  festival.  .  .  .  That  such  a  song,  danced  in  sowing 
time,  and  representing  the  progress  and  abundance  of  the  crop, 
should  be  supposed  to  bring  a  blessing  on  the  labours  of  the 
year,  is  quite  in  conformity  with  what  we  know  of  popular  be- 
lief, ancient  and  modern." 

Another  game,  called  "  Threading  the  Needle,"  affords 
us,  according  to  Newell,  a  further  illustration  of  this  belief. 

It  is  played  in  America  and  England  by  a  chain  of  child- 
ren passing  under  the  arch  formed  by  the  uplifted  joined 
hands  of  two  other  children,  till  one  of  the  chain  is  caught 
by  the  dropping  of  the  arms.  The  child  then  makes  a 
choice  of  some  alternative,  which  decides  to  which  of  the 
two  children  who  make  the  arch  she  is  to  attach  herself. 
When  all  are  caught  there  is  a  "  tug-of-war. " 

Mr.  Newell  informs  us  that  the  name  "  Threading  the 
Needle"  is  still  applied,  in  a  district  of  Central  France, 
to  a  dance  in  which  many  hundred  persons  take  part,  in 
which  from  time  to  time  the  pair  who  form  the  head  of  the 
row  raise  their  arms  to  allow  the  line  to  pass  through,  coil- 
ing and  winding  like  a  great  serpent.  When  a  French 
savant  asked  the  peasants  of  La  Chatre  why  they  performed 
this  dance,  the  answer  was,  "  To  make  the  hemp  grow." 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  81. 


274  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

This  apparently  inconsequent  reply  of  the  French  peasant, 
who,  judging  from  the  locality,  may  very  well  have  belonged 
to  the  non-Aryan,  dark,  round-headed  race  of  Central 
France,  is  very  significant,  and  takes  us  back  to  an  attitude 
of  mind  that  is  difficult  for  us  to  realise,  but  which  is  still 
exemplified  by  many  living  savage  peoples. 

I  have  myself  seen,1  at  the  beginning  of  the  rainy  season 
in  Torres  Straits,  a  dance  performed  by  natives  whose  heads 
were  enveloped  in  large  masks,  which  consisted  of  imitations 
of  a  human  face  resting  on  a  crocodile's  head  and  sur- 
mounted by  a  large  figure  of  a  saw-fish.  It  was  called  the 
"  Saw-fish  Dance,"  and  was  designed  to  bring  good  Luck  in 
the  approaching  fishing  season.  I  have  also  seen  these 
natives  in  their  dances  represent  the  actions  of  ordinary  life, 
but  sometimes  in  a  slightly  conventionalised  manner,  such 
as  planting  yams,  picking  up  pearl-shell  from  the  bottom  of 
the  sea,  stamping  out  a  fire,  etc. 

It  is  now  recognised  by  anthropologists  that  ceremonies 
which  are  performed  in  connection  with  agriculture,  fish- 
ing, hunting,  and  the  like,  are  mainly  magical  rites,  or  rather 
magical  pantomimes.  The  conventional  realism  (if  the 
phrase  may  be  permitted)  of  these  performances  ensures  the 
success  of  the  undertaking,  mainly  by  the  supposed  sympathy 
between  the  mimetic  action  and  the  real  operation. 

1  A.  C.  Haddon,  "  The  Secular  and  Ceremonial  Dances  of  Torres  Straits," 
Internat.  Arch,  fur  Ethnogr.,  vi.,  1893,  p.  131. 


CHAPTER  XII 
LONDON  BRIDGE"  :   FOUNDATION  SACRIFICE 
ONDON  BRIDGE  is  broken  down. 


L 


London  Bridge  is  broken  down, 
London  Bridge  is  broken  down, 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Build  it  up  with  bricks  and  mortar, 
Build  it  up  with  bricks  and  mortar, 
Build  it  up  with  bricks  and  mortar, 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Bricks  and  mortar  will  mould  away,  [repeat  three  times'] 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Build  it  up  with  penny  loaves,  [repeat  three  times'] 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Penny  loaves  will  be  stolen  away,  [repeat  three  times] 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Build  it  up  with  gold  and  silver,  [repeat  three  times] 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Gold  and  silver  will  be  stolen  away,  [repeat  three  times] 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Send  a  man  to  watch  all  night,  [repeat  three  times] 
My  fair  lady. 

275 


276  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  Suppose  the  man  should  fall  asleep,  [repeat  three  times'] 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Set  a  dog  to  bark  all  night,  {repeat  three  times'] 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Give  him  nuts  to  crack  all  night,  {repeat  three  tunes] 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Suppose  the  nuts  should  all  be  bad,  [repeat  three  times] 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Set  a  horse  to  gallop  all  night,  [repeat  three  times] 
My  fair  lady." 

These  are  the  words  of  a  singing  game,  which  I  saw 
played  by  a  group  of  girls  at  the  village  of  Barrington,  near 
Cambridge.  Variants  of  this  game  occur  all  over  the 
country;  and  in  Ireland  it  is  recorded  from  Belfast  and 
Cork. 

A  few  of  these  variants  only  can  be  noted,  and  these  very 
shortly.     In  Belfast  the  rhyme  begins : 

"  London  Bridge  is  broken  down, 
Grant  said  little  bee  1  ; 
London  Bridge  is  broken  down, 
Where  I  'd  be." 

A  common  London  version  runs  thus: 

"  London  Bridge  is  broken  down, 
Dance  o'er  my  lady  lee  ; 
London  Bridge  is  broken  down, 
With  a  gay  lady. 

"  How  shall  we  build  it  up  again  ? 
Dance  o'er  my  lady  lee  ; 

1  Another  informant  gives  the  refrain,  "  Grand  says  the  little  Dee." 


"  LONDON  BRIDGE"  2^ 

How  shall  we  build  it  up  again  ? 
With  a  gay  lady. 

"  Silver  and  gold  will  be  stole  away, 
Etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

"  Build  it  up  with  iron  and  steel, 
Etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

"  Iron  and  steel  will  bend  and  bow, 
Etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

"  Build  it  up  with  wood  and  clay, 
Etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

"  Wood  and  clay  will  wash  away, 
Etc.,  etc.,  etc. 

"  Build  it  up  with  stone  so  strong, 
Dance  o'er  my  lady  lee  ; 
Huzza  !  't  will  last  for  ages  long, 
With  a  gay  lady." 

In  some  versions  the  watchman  is  replaced  by  a  prisoner; 
after  the  "  penny  loaves  "  verse  we  find  in  Hampshire: 

"  What  have  this  poor  prisoner  done, 
Prisoner  done,  prisoner  done, 
What  have  this  poor  prisoner  done, 
My  fair  lady  ? 

"  Stole  my  watch,  and  lost  my  key, 
Lost  my  key,  lost  my  key, 
Stole  my  watch,  and  lost  my  key, 
My  fair  lady. 

"  Off  to  prison  you  must  go, 
You  must  go,  you  must  go, 
Off  to  prison  you  must  go, 
My  fair  lady." 


278  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

In  one  Kent  variant  we  find  : 

"  What  has  this  poor  prisoner  done  ? 

Stole  my  watch  and  broke  my  chain. 
How  many  pounds  will  set  him  free  3 

Three  hundred  pounds  will  set  him  free. 
The  half  of  that  I  have  not  got. 

Then  off  to  prison  he  must  go." 

The  game  is  variously  played.  It  is  now  generally  played 
like  "  Oranges  and  Lemons,"  only  there  is  now  no  "  tug- 
of-war  "  at  the  end.  Often  two  children  join  hands  to  form 
an  arch,  the  remainder  form  a  long  line  by  holding  to  each 
other's  dresses  or  waists,  and  run  under.  Those  who  are 
running  under  sing  the  first  verse ;  the  two  who  form  the 
arch  sing  the  second  and  alternate  verses.  At  the  words, 
"  What  has  this  poor  prisoner  done  ?  "  the  girls  who  form 
the  arch  catch  one  of  the  line  (generally  the  last  one). 
When  the  last  verse  is  sung  the  prisoner  is  taken  a  little  dis- 
tance away,  and  the  game  begins  again. 

At  Barrington  the  children  formed  two  parallel  advancing 
and  retreating  lines,  and  finished  by  all  dancing  round  in  a 
circle.     The  same  occurs  in  Berkshire. 

Mrs.  Gomme  in  her  Traditional  Games  of  England,  Scot- 
land, and  Ireland  analyses  this  game  in  a  masterly  manner, 
and  shows  that  "  the  special  feature  of  the  rhymes  is  that 
considerable  difficulty  occurs  in  the  building  of  the  bridge 
by  ordinary  means,  but  without  exactly  suggesting  that  ex- 
traordinary means  are  to  be  adopted."  The  London  ver- 
sion alone  faithfully  reflects  an  actual  building  episode. 
The  game  then  diverges  into  two  groups,  that  with  a 
watchman  and  that  with  a  prisoner. 

The  watchman  incident  approaches  nearer  to  modern 
facts,  and  is  therefore  probably  a  comparatively  recent 
modification,  since  the  prisoner,  as  we  shall  see,  is  an  unex- 


"LONDON  BRIDGE"  2jg 

plained  factor.  A  watchman  children  can  understand,  and 
then  the  game  is  occasionally  prolonged  in  the  endeavour 
to  keep  him  awake  and  alive  to  his  duties;  this  comes  out 
clearly  in  a  Berkshire  version : 

"  We  '11  set  a  man  to  watch  at  night. 

Suppose  the  man  should  fall  asleep  ? 
Give  him  a  pipe  of  tobacco  to  smoke. 

Suppose  the  pipe  should  fall  and  break  ? 
We  '11  give  him  a  bag  of  nuts  to  crack. 

Suppose  the  nuts  were  rotten  and  bad? 
We  '11  give  him  a  horse  to  gallop  around." 

And  the  children  dance  round  in  a  ring  in  imitation  of  the 
horse. 

The  prisoner  incident  is,  according  to  Mrs.  Gomme,  more 
common  than  the  watchman.  In  only  one  case  (Shropshire) 
is  the  prisoner  ransomed ;  in  the  others  he  is  sent  to  prison. 

What  does  this  sudden  appearance  of  a  prisoner  indicate  ? 

The  two  following  modern  Greek  songs  very  vividly 
supply  the  answer : 

THE   STOICHEION   OF   THE    BRIDGE. 

(Peloponnesos . ) 

"  A  bridge  across  the  Tricha  broad,  with  sixty-two  wide  arches. 
All  day  long  do  they  build  the  bridge  :  by  night  it  falls  to  pieces. 
And  sadly  weep  the  'prentices,  and  sorely  grieve  the  masons. 
A  little  birdie  went  and  perched  upon  the  arch  i'  th'  middle  ; 
She  sang  not  as  a  birdie  sings,  nor  was  her  note  the  swallow's  : 
■  Without  a  human  Stoicheion  the  bridge  can  ne'er  be  founded. 
It  neither  must  an  idiot  be,  a  madman,  nor  a  pauper, 
But   Ghiorghi's  wife  it  needs  must  be,  Ghiorghi's,  the  master 

mason.' 
Then  hasten  all  the  'prentices,  and  off  they  set  to  fetch  her. 


280  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

\  Thine  hour  be  happy,  Ghiorghiana  ! '     '  My  boys,  I  'm  glad  to 

see  you  ! ' 
'  Unbind  and  swaddle  fresh  thy  babe,  and  of  thy  milk  now  give 

him  ; 
Thy  husband,  Ghiorghi,  he  is  sick,  and  thou  with  us  must  hasten.' 
As  they  were  going  on  the  road,  and  on  the  road  did  journey, 
*  Three  sisters  once  were  we  [she  cried]  and  Stoicheia  we  '11  all  be  ! 
Of  Korphos  one  's  a  Stoicheion  ;  the  other  of  Zitouni  ; 
And  I,  the  third  and  fairest  one,  o'  th'  bridge  across  the  Tricha. 
And  as  my  eyes  are  streaming  now,  may  wayfarers  stream  over  ! '  " 

Here  the  human  sacrifice  must  be  provided  by  the  master 
mason;  in  the  following  song  the  victim  is  selected  by  a 
method  of  casting  lots.  In  Legrand's  New  Greek  Diction- 
ary, stoicheion  is  defined,  amongst  other  meanings,  as  the 
genius  or  spirit  of  a  place.  In  this  instance  the  idea  appears 
to  be  that  to  enable  the  bridge  to  last  it  must  be  endowed 
with  a  living  spirit. 

THE   BRIDGE   OF  ADANA. 

(Kappadocia.) 

"  All  day  long  did  they  build  the  piers  ;  by  night  they  fell  in  ruins. 
'  Come  now  and  let  us  branches  cut  !  come  now  will  we  chop 

faggots  ; 
Let  us  give  up  one  soul  of  us  that  firm  the  bridge  be  builded.' 
They  sat  them  down,  and  chopped  away,  the  two-and-forty  masons. 
Then  fell  from  Yianni's  hand  his  axe,  unfortunate  Yiannaki  ! 
'Yiannaki,  go,  thy  goodwife  fetch,   if  thou  thy  head  would'st 

keep  thee  ! ' 
'  If  I  should  now  my  goodwife  give,  I  yet  can  find  another  ; 
But  if  I  my  own  head  give  up,  I  while  I  'm  young  shall  leave  her!' " 

So  they  fetch  the  poor  wife,  who  is  "  vigilant  and  quick 
at  bath  and  washing."  The  husband  drops  his  ring  down 
the  excavations  and  induces  his  wife  to  fetch  it  up. 


FOUNDATION  SACRIFICE  28 1 

"  Then    down   goes   she,    and   down    goes    she,  steps   forty-two 

descends  she, 
And  fall  upon  her  as  she  goes  of  stones  a  thousand  litras, 
And    throw    they    down    upon    her,   too,   of    earth   a    thousand 

spadefuls." 

In  her  dying  lament  she  exclaims: 

"  '  Hear  thou  my  words,  Yiannaki  mine,  let  not  the  world  rejoice 

thee  ; 
Three  only  sisters  once  were  we,  we  were  three  sisters  only  ; 
The  one  did  build  the  Danube's  bridge,  the  second  the  Euphrates', 
And  I,  I  too,  the  murdered  one,  the  bridge  build  of  Adana.'  " 

Miss  Lucy  M.  J.  Garnett,  in  her  Greek  Folk  Poesy,  from 
which  book  these  two  songs  are  taken,  points  out  that  nu- 
merous stories  of  foundation  sacrifices  are  told  in  Celtic 
countries.     In  Adamnan's  Life  of  Columba  1  we  read  : 

"  Columkille  said,  then,  to  his  people,  '  It  would  be  well  for  us 
that  our  roots  should  pass  into  the  earth  here.'  And  he  said  to 
them,  '  It  is  permitted  to  you  that  some  of  you  go  under  the 
earth  of  this  island  to  consecrate  it.'  Odhran  arose  quickly,  and 
thus  spake  :  '  If  you  accept  me,'  said  he,  '  I  am  ready  for  that' 
'O  Odhran,'  said  Columkille,  'you  shall  receive  the  reward  of 
this  :  no  request  shall  be  granted  to  any  one  at  my  tomb  unless 
he  first  ask  of  thee.'  Odhran  then  went  to  heaven.  He  (Colum- 
kille) founded  the  church  of  Hy  then." 

What  strange  methods  the  missionaries  had  in  those  days ! 

There  are  many  traditions  still  current  in  the  Highlands 
regarding  such  sacrifices.  One  of  these  relates  that  when  the 
workmen  had  assembled  to  lay  the  foundations  of  Tigh-an- 
Torr,  in  Western  Ross-shire,  they  caught  the  first  person 
who  chanced  to  pass  and  buried  him  under  the  foundation- 

1  The  Life  of  St.  Columba,  Founder  of  Hy  ;  Written  by  Adamnan,  Ninth 
Abbot  of  that  Monastery.     Ed   by  W.  Reeves,  Dublin,  1857,  p.  203. 


282  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

stone.     On  laying  the  foundations  of  Redcastle,  a  red-haired 
girl  was  buried  alive  under  the  stone. 

As  there  is  so  much  evidence  of  this  ghastly  custom  in 
the  British  Islands,  there  is  no  need  for  us  to  seek  for 
further  confirmation  in  European  practice.  One  instance 
will  suffice.  So  late  as  1843,  m  Germany,  when  a  new 
bridge  was  built  at  Halle,  a  notion  was  abroad  among  the 
people  that  a  child  was  wanted  to  be  built  into  the  founda- 
tion. In  Africa  and  the  far  East  we  find  precisely  the  same 
custom ;  but  somehow  we  rather  expect  that  sort  of  thing 
to  be  done  by  barbarians  and  savages,  forgetting  all  the 
while  that  it  was  not  so  very  long  ago  when  our  own  ances- 
tors did  the  very  same. 

"So  recently  as  1872  there  was  a  scare  in  Calcutta  when 
Hooghly  Bridge  was  being  constructed.  The  natives  then  got 
hold  of  the  idea  that  the  Mother  Ganges,  indignant  at  being 
bridged,  had  at  last  consented  to  submit  to  the  insult  on  con- 
dition that  each  pier  of  the  structure  was  founded  on  a  layer  of 
children's  heads.  Formerly,  in  Siam,  when  a  new  city  gate  was 
being  erected,  it  was  customary  for  a  number  of  officers  to  lie  in 
wait  and  seize  the  first  four  or  eight  persons  who  happened  to 
pass  by,  and  who  were  then  buried  alive  under  the  gate-posts  to 
serve  as  guardian  angels  ;  and  there  is  a  tradition  about  London 
Bridge  itself,  that  the  stones  were  bespattered  with  the  blood  of 
little  children.  Fitzstephen,  in  his  well-known  account  of  Lon- 
don of  the  twelfth  century,  mentions  that  when  the  Tower  was 
built  the  mortar  was  tempered  with  the  blood  of  beasts."  ' 

The  substitution  of  animal  for  human  sacrifice  is  too  well 
recognised  in  comparative  religion  to  need  substantiating; 
for  example,  a  chicken  sometimes  replaces  a  girl  as  a  founda- 
tion sacrifice  in  Borneo. 

1  A.  B.  Gomme,  Traditional  Games,  pp.  346,  347  ;  further  illustrations  of 
this  custom  will  be  found  in  G.  L.  Gomme,  Early  Village  Life,  p.  29,  and  E. 
B.  Tylor,  Primitive  Culture,  i.,  pp.  104-108 


FOUNDATION  SACRIFICE  283 

It  seems  that  Professor  Leon  Pineau  read  a  paper  before 
a  Congress  in  Paris  in  the  spring  of  1897  on  one  of  the  most 
popular  of  French  "  rondes,"  which  commences  thus  in 
some  localities: 

"  Sur  le  pont  de  Nantes, 
Sur  le  pont  de  Nantes, 
Un  bal  est  affiche     .     .     ." 

Elsewhere  it  runs : 

"  Sur  le  pont  du  Nord, 
Sur  le  pont  du  Nord, 
Un  bal  y  est  donne." 

Of  this  there  are  many  variants,  but  the  theme  is  the  same 
in  all.  M.  Pineau  argued  that  this  was  related  to  "  a  ritual 
dance  on  the  occasion  of  a  human  sacrifice  to  the  divinities 
of  the  water,"  and  attributed  this  traditional  song  to  a 
Celtic  origin.  A  critic  '  suggests  that  this  was  more  prob- 
ably a  Gothic  rather  than  a  Celtic  song. 

Newell a  has  also  studied  this  game,  and  he  has  collected 
some  foreign  contemporary  and  mediaeval  games  which  he 
thinks  are  variants.  He  describes  the  American  version  of 
the  game  as  follows : 

"  Two  players,  by  their  uplifted  hands,  form  an  arch,  repre- 
senting the  bridge,  under  which  passes  the  train  of  children, 
each  clinging  to  the  garments  of  the  predecessor,  and  hurrying 
to  get  safely  by.  The  last  of  the  train  is  caught  by  the  lowered 
arms  of  the  guardians  of  the  bridge,  and  asked,  '  Will  you  have 
a  diamond  necklace  or  a  gold  pin  ? '  4  a  rose  or  a  cabbage  ? '  or 
some  equivalent  question.  The  keepers  have  already  privately 
agreed  which  of  the  two  each  of  these  objects  shall  represent, 
and  according  to  the  prisoner's  choice  he  is  placed  behind  one  or 

1  S.  B.,  "  Apropos  d'une  Ronde  enfantine,"  La  Science  Sociale,  xxiii.,  1897, 
p.  109.  5  Loc.  cit.,  p.  204. 


284  THE  STUDY  0F  MAN 

the  other.  When  all  are  caught,  the  game  ends  with  a  '  tug-of- 
war,'  the  two  sides  pulling  against  each  other,  and  the  child  who 
lets  go  and  breaks  the  line  is  pointed  at  and  derided." 

In  Suabia,  the  two  keepers  of  the  "  Golden  Bridge  "  are 
called  respectively  the  M  Devil  "  and  the  "  Angel,"  and  the 
object  is  to  decide  who  shall  be  devils  and  who  angels. 

In  France  the  game  is  known  as  "  Heaven  and  Hell." 
The  children  who  have  made  a  good  choice  after  the  selec- 
tion is  finished  pursue  the  devils,  making  the  signs  of  horns 
with  fingers  extended  from  the  forehead. 

In  Italy  the  name  of  the  sport  is  ' '  Open  the  Gates. ' '  The 
gates  are  those  of  the  Inferno  and  of  Paradise;  St.  Peter  is 
the  keeper  of  one,  St.  Paul  of  the  other.  The  children 
choose  between  wine  and  water;  but  when  the  destiny  of 
the  last  child  is  decided,  the  two  girls  who  represent  the 
keepers  of  the  bridge  break  their  arch  of  lifted  hands,  and 
move  in  different  directions,  followed  by  their  subjects, 
"  while  the  cries  and  shrieks  of  the  players  condemned  to 
the  Inferno  contrast  with  the  pathetic  songs  and  sweet 
cadences  of  those  destined  to  the  happiness  of  Paradise." 

The  game  is  mentioned  by  Rabelais  (about  A.D.  1533), 
under  the  name  of  the  "  Fallen  Bridge." 

In  German  versions  the  keepers  are  called  "  Devil  and 
Angel,"  "  King  and  Emperor,"  or  "  Sun  and  Moon." 

In  this  latter  form  the  game  has  been  one  of  the  few  kept 
up  by  the  Germans  of  Pennsylvania,  who  call  it  the  "  Bridge 
of  Holland  M  ("  Die  Hollandisch  Briick  "). 

As  to  the  origin  of  this  remarkable  game,  our  citations 
have  already  made  it  clear  that  one  of  its  features  consists 
in  a  representation  of  the  antagonism  of  celestial  and  infer- 
nal powers,  and  the  final  decision  by  which  each  soul  is 
assigned  a  place  on  the  one  side  or  the  other. 

It  was  universally  believed  in  the  Middle  Ages  that  the 


FOUNDATION  SACRIFICE  285 

soul,  separated  from  the  body,  had  to  cross  a  dangerous 
bridge,  and  subsequently  undergo  a  literal  weighing  in  the 
balance,  according  to  the  result  of  which  its  destiny  was  de- 
cided. It  is  in  the  nature  of  things  that  children  conversant 
with  these  ideas  should  have  dramatised  them  in  their  sports. 
We  see  no  reason  with  the  German  writers  to  go  back  to 
ancient  northern  mythology ;  nor  do  we  find  any  ground  for 
believing  that  our  game  is  more  likely  to  be  of  Teutonic 
than  Romance  descent. 

An  Irish  domestic  from  Waterford  gives  the  following  ac- 
count of  the  game : 

An  actual  bridge  was  built  up  with  sticks  and  boards,  and 
surrounded  by  the  ring  of  players,  dressed  in  costume; 
without  stood  the  "  devil."  Little  girls  in  variously 
coloured  dresses  represented  the  angels. 

The  repeated  fall  and  rebuilding  of  the  bridge  was  acted 
out,  as  described  in  the  verses  of  the  song.  This  fall  was 
ascribed  to  the  malice  of  the  devil,  who  ruined  it  during  the 
night  (watching  it,  said  the  narrator,  from  the  top  of  an 
ash-tree  during  the  day). 

The  imprisonment  of  the  child  enclosed  by  the  arms  of 
the  leaders  was  acted  in  a  noteworthy  fashion.  A  chain 
was  taken  and  wrapped  round  the  child  in  the  form  of  a  ser- 
pent (for  the  devil  is  a  serpent,  said  the  reciter) ;  the  captive 
was  taken  to  a  hut  (representing  apparently  the  entrance  to 
the  Inferno)  built  by  the  sea.  Meantime,  the  rest  of  the 
train  called  on  their  leader  for  help ;  but  he  answered,  "  The 
devil  has  five  feet,  and  thirteen  eyes,  and  is  stronger  than 
I!  "  The  performance  lasted  five  hours,  and  the  name  of 
the  edifice  was  the  "  Devil's  Bridge." 

In  this  Irish  game  tests  were  employed  to  determine 
whether  the  captive  should  belong  to  the  devil  or  not.  One 
of  these  was  the  ability  to  walk  on  a  straight  line  drawn  on 
the  ground. 


286  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Newell  sums  up  his  conclusions  as  follows: 

"  We  suspect,  however,  that  that  part  of  the  sport  which  relates 
to  the  warfare  of  good  and  evil  powers  does  not  belong  to  the 
original  idea,  but  that  a  still  more  primitive  game  has  taken  on 
an  ending  which  was  common  to  many  amusements  in  the  Middle 
Ages.  The  central  point  of  the  whole  is  the  repeated  downfall 
of  the  structure.  Now  there  is  a  distinct  mythological  reason  for 
such  a  representation.  In  early  times  no  edifice  was  so  important 
as  a  bridge,  which  renders  intercourse  possible  between  districts 
heretofore  separated.  Hence  the  sanctity  attributed  in  mediaeval 
times  to  the  architects  of  bridges.  The  devil,  or  (in  more 
ancient  guise)  the  elemental  spirit  of  the  land,  who  detests  any 
interference  with  the  solitude  he  loves,  has  an  especial  antipathy 
to  bridges.  His  repeated  and  successful  attempts  to  interfere 
with  such  a  structure,  until  he  is  bought  off  wTith  an  offering  like 
that  of  Iphigenia,  are  recorded  in  legends  which  attach  to  nu- 
merous bridges  in  Europe.  It  is  on  such  supernatural  opposition 
that  the  English  form  of  the  game  appears  to  turn.  The  struc- 
ture, which  is  erected  in  the  daytime,  is  ruined  at  night ;  every 
form  of  material — wood,  stone,  and  gold,  is  tried  in  vain  ;  the 
vigilance  of  the  watchman,  or  of  the  cock  and  the  dog — guardian 
animals  of  the  darkness — is  insufficient  to  protect  the  edifice 
from  the  attack  of  the  offended  spirits. 

"  The  child  arrested  seems  to  be  originally  regarded  as  the 
price  paid  for  allowing  the  structure  to  stand.  In  times  when  all 
men's  thoughts  were  concerned  about  the  final  judgment,  a  differ- 
ent turn  was  given  to  the  sport — namely,  whether  the  prisoner 
should  belong  to  the  devils  or  to  the  angels,  who  wage  perpetual 
warfare,  and  dispute  with  each  other  the  possession  of  departed 
souls.  Finally,  in  quite  recent  days,  religious  allusions  were  ex- 
cluded, and  the  captive,  now  accused  of  mere  theft,  was  sentenced 
to  be  locked  up,  not  in  the  Inferno,  but  in  a  commonplace  jail  " 
(p.  211). 

This  mystical  explanation  of  Mr.  Newell's  is  extremely 


FOUNDATION  SACRIFICE  287 

ingenious,  but  there  does  not  appear  to  be  any  good  evi- 
dence to  connect  the  foreign  games,  which  look  rather  like 
degraded  M  miracle  plays,"  with  the  English  "  London 
Bridge"  game;  further,  as  Mrs.  Gomme  acutely  points  out, 
the  tug-of-war  incident  does  not  come  into  the  English 
game. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

"  DRAW  A  PAIL  OF  WATER"  :  WATER   WORSHIP 

THIS  game  is  usually  played  by  eight  girls,  two  of  whom 
face  one  another  and  stretch  out  their  arms  towards 
each  other  and  join  hands.  Two  others  do  the  same,  the 
four  girls  thus  making  a  cross  with  their  arms.  They  see- 
saw backwards  and  forwards,  and  sing  a  song,  the  following 
version  of  which  is  taken  from  Halliwell's  Nursery  Rhymes, 
Games,  cclxxxvii.  : 

' '  Draw  a  pail  of  water 
For  my  lady's  daughter: 

My  father  's  a  king  and  my  mother  's  a  queen; 
My  two  little  sisters  are  dressed  in  green, 
Stamping  grass  and  parsley, 
Marigold  leaves  and  daisies. 
One  rush,  two  rush, 
Pray  thee,  fine  lady,  come  under  my  bush." 

One  girl  gets  inside  the  enclosing  arms,  and  they  repeat 
the  song  until  all  four  have  "  popped  under,"  when  they 
"  J°g  "  UP  and  down  till  they  fall  on  the  ground. 

Sometimes  only  two  girls  join  hands,  or  the  four  may 
form  a  square  with  their  extended  arms,  which  they  sway 
backwards  and  forwards,  singing  the  lines.  Two  arms  are 
then  raised,  and  one  girl  comes  under;  this  is  repeated  till 

28S 


"DRAW  A    PAIL    OF    WATER"  289 

all  four  girls  have  entered  the  square,  then  their  arms  en- 
circle each  other's  waists,  and  they  dance  round. 

Halliwell 2  describes  a  different  action  from  any  of  these. 
A  string  of  children,  hand  in  hand,  stand  in  a  row.  A  child 
stands  in  front  of  them  as  leader;  two  other  children  form 
an  arch,  holding  both  of  the  hands  of  the  other.  The 
string  of  children  pass  under  the  arch,  the  last  of  whom  is 
taken  captive  by  the  two  holding  hands.  The  verses  are 
repeated  until  all  are  taken. 

A  Belfast  version  of  the  song,  collected  by  Mr.  W.  H. 
Patterson,2  is  as  follows : 

"  Sift  the  lady's  oaten  meal,  sift  it  into  flour, 

Put  it  in  a  chest  of  drawers  and  let  it  lie  an  hour. 

One  of  my  rush, 

Two  of  my  rush, 
Please,  young  lady,  come  under  my  bush. 
My  bush  is  too  high,  my  bush  is  too  low ; 
Please,  young  lady,  come  under  my  bough. 
Stir  up  the  dumpling,  stir  up  the  dumpling." 

It  would  be  tedious  to  enumerate  the  many  variants  of 
the  song,  but  the  following  is  a  plausible  restoration  com- 
pounded out  of  fifteen  versions  by  Mrs.  Gomme  in  her 
Traditional  Games: 

"  Draw  a  pail  of  water 
For  a  lady's  daughter; 

Her  father  's  a  king,  her  mother  's  a  queen, 
Her  two  little  sisters  are  dressed  in  green; 
Stamping  grass  and  parsley, 
Marigold  leaves  and  daisies: 
Sift  the  lady's  oatmeal,  sift  it  into  flour, 
Put  it  in  a  chestnut  tree,  let  it  lie  an  hour: 

1  Nursery  Rhymes,  p.  63. 

2  A.  B.  Gomme,  Tradit.  Games,  i.,  p.  103. 

19 


29O  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Give  a  silver  pin  and  a  gold  ring. 
One  and  a  hush!  two  and  a  rush! 
Pray,  young  lady,  pop  under  a  bush: 
My  bush  is  too  high,  my  bush  is  too  low; 
Please,  young  lady,  come  under  my  bough." 

A  see-sawing  movement  in  the  game  probably  represents 
the  raising  of  water  from  a  well.  The  incidents  may  be 
grouped  as  follows : 

(1)  Drawing  water  from  a  well. 

(2)  For  a  devotee  at  the  well. 

(3)  Collecting  flowers  for  dressing  the  well. 

(4)  Making  a  cake  for  presentation. 

(5)  Gifts  to  the  well  (according  to  some  versions,  a  silver 
pin,  gold  ring,  and  probably  a  garter). 

(6)  Command  of  silence. 

(7)  The  presence  of  the  devotee  at  the  sacred  bush. 

It  can  be  by  no  mere  chance  that  all  of  these  are  incidents 
of  primitive  well-worship. 

The  "  dressing  "  or  adorning  of  wells  by  means  of  gar- 
lands occurred  at  Bonchurch,  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  where  on 
St.  Boniface's  Day  the  well  was  decorated  with  chaplets  of 
flowers.1  It  is,  however,  rare  in  England,  except  in  the 
western  counties,  North  Lancashire  and  Westmoreland, 
and  especially  on  the  borders.2  Derbyshire,  Staffordshire, 
Worcestershire,  and  Shropshire  comprise  the  main  region  of 
garland-dressing,  and  the  practice  has  frequently  been  de- 
scribed. Mr.  Gomme  points  out  that  in  Worcestershire  and 
Staffordshire  the  custom  is  simple ;  in  Derbyshire  and  Shrop- 
shire other  practices  occur  in  connection  with  the  well-dress- 
ing. Garland-dressing,  though  found  in  the  eastern  part  of 
the  latter  county,  is  almost  entirely  absent  from  the  western, 

1  Tompkins,  History  of  the  Isle  of  Wight,  ii.,  p.  121. 

2  Henderson,  Folk-lore  of  the  Northern  Counties,  p.  2. 


4  DRAW  A   PAIL   OF    WATER" 


291 


where  wishing  and  healing  wells  are  found.1  On  the  hill- 
side at  Rorrington  Green,  in  the  parish  of  Chirbury,  is  a 
Halliwell,  or  Holy  Well,  at  which  a  wake  was  celebrated  on 
Ascension  Day.  The  well  was  adorned  with  a  bower  of 
green  boughs,  rushes,  and  flowers,  and  a  Maypole  was  set 
up.  The  people  "  used  to  walk  round  the  hill  with  fife  and 
drum  and  fiddle,  dancing  and  frolicking  as  they  went." 
They  threw  pins  into  the  well  to  bring  good  luck  and  to 
preserve  them  from  being  bewitched,  and  they  also  drank 
some  of  the  water.  Cakes  were  also  eaten;  they  were 
round,  flat  buns,  from  three  to  four  inches  across,  sweet- 
ened, spiced,  and  marked  with  a  cross,  and  they  were  sup- 
posed to  bring  good  luck  if  kept.  The  wake  is  said  to  have 
been  discontinued  about  the  year  1832  or  1834.3 

At  the  village  of  Girton,  near  Cambridge,  a  game  which  is 
evidently  the  same  is  called  "  A  Lump  of  Sugar." 

"  Grind  your  mother's  flour, 
Three  sacks  an  hour, 
One  in  a  rush, 
Two  in  a  crush, 
Pray,  old  lady,  creep  under  the  bush." 

Mrs.  Lawrence  describes  the  game  as  follows :  The  girls 
form  into  sets  of  four,  those  facing  one  another  join  hands 
and  sway  backwards  and  forwards  while  singing.  At "  Pray, 
old  lady,"  etc.,  the  right  and  left  arms  of  one  couple  are 
raised  over  the  head  of  one  of  the  opposite  couple  and 
dropped  behind  her  back,  thus  enclosing  her  in  a  ring.  This 
is  repeated  till  all  are,  so  to  speak,  inside  the  ring.  They 
then  jump  round  shouting,  "  A  lump  of  sugar,"  till  they 
are  tired. 

The  association  of  sugar  with  this  game  puzzled  me  very 

1  Miss  C.  S.  Burne,  Shropshire  Folk-lore,  p.  414. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  434. 


292  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

much  till  I  came  across  the  following  four  examples  of 
drinking  sugar-water  at  holy  wells.  The  use  of  oatmeal  in 
the  first  custom  coincides  with  the  versions,  "  Sift  the  lady's 
oaten  meal,  sift  it  into  flour"  (Belfast),  and  "  Sieve  my 
lady's  oatmeal,  grind  my  lady's  flour"  (Halliwell,  No. 
cclxxxviii.). 

Country  folk  still  resort  to  "  Our  Lady's  Well,"  at  Belper, 
in  Derbyshire,  bringing  not  only  vessels  from  which  to  drink 
the  water,  but  "  noggins  "  in  which  to  carry  back  a  supply 
for  home  drinking.  Afflicted  persons  have  been  seen  bath- 
ing their  limbs  in  the  cold  running  water,  and  heard  to  say 
they  were  benefited  by  repeated  applications.  Belper  child- 
ren used  to  carry — at  any  time  when  they  thought  fit,  and 
could  get  permission  from  their  mothers — a  mug  or  por- 
ringer, and  a  paper  containing  oatmeal  and  sugar,  to  the 
Lady  Well,  and  there  drink  the  mixture  of  meal,  sugar,  and 
water.     This  was  the  chief  item  of  the  afternoon's  outing.1 

"  Sugar-cupping  is  another  custom  which  survives  here.  On 
Easter  Day  young  people  and  children  go  to  the  Dropping  Well, 
near  Tideswell  [also  in  Derbyshire],  with  a  cup  in  one  pocket 
and  a  quarter  of  a  pound  of  sugar  [?  honey]  in  the  other,  and 
having  caught  in  their  cups  as  much  water  as  they  wished  from 
the  droppings  of  the  Tor-spring,  they  dissolved  the  sugar  in  it."  2 

The  Eas  Well  at  Baschurch,  in  Shropshire,  was  frequented 
till  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  by  young  people,  who  went 
there  on  Palm  Sunday  to  drink  sugar  and  water  and  eat 
cakes.  A  clergyman  who  was  present  in  1830  speaks  of 
seeing  little  boys  scrambling  for  the  lumps  of  sugar  which 
escaped  from  the  glasses  and  floated  down  the  brook  which 
flows  from  the  spring  into  the  river.3 

1  R.  C.  Hope,  The  Legendary  Lore  of  the  Holy  Wells  of  England,  1893,  p.  53. 

2  Glover,  History  of  Derbyshire,  i.,  p.  307,  quoted  from  Hope,  loc.  cit.,  p.  60. 

3  Miss  C.  S.  Bume,  Shropshire  Folk-lore,  p.  432. 


DRA  W  A   PAIL    OF    WA  PER " 


293 


.  It  is  customary  for  the  younger  folk  to  assemble  on  Sun- 
day evenings  and  drink  the  water  of  St.  Helen's  Well  (at 
Eshton,  in  Yorkshire)  mixed  with  sugar.  The  ceremony 
appears  now  to  have  died  out.  It  was  in  vogue  late  in  the 
last  century.1 

Great  concourses  of  people  from  all  parts  used  to  assemble 
at  "  Our  Lady's  Wells,"  or  the  "  Holy  Wells,"  near  Long 
Witton,  in  Northumberland,  on  Midsummer  Sunday  and 
the  Sunday  following,  and  amuse  themselves  with  leaping, 
eating  gingerbread  (brought  for  sale  to  the  spot),  and  drink- 
ing the  waters  of  the  well.  These  wells  had  a  high  reputa- 
tion for  their  very  virtuous  qualities;  that  farthest  to  the 
east  is  called  the  "  Eye  Well."  2 

It  is  possible  that  drinking  sugar-water  is  a  degradation 
from  drinking  a  mixture  of  oatmeal,  sugar,  and  water,  and  this 
again  may  be  an  abbreviated  form  of  making  a  cake.  Sugar 
was  not  a  primitive  comestible,  its  place  was  taken  by  honey ; 
now  honey  mixed  with  meal,  if  flavoured,  makes  a  kind  of 
gingerbread,  a  confection  that  we  find  in  the  last  example. 
Gingerbread  is  certainly  a  popular  cake  with  the  folk,  and  it 
is  probably  a  very  ancient  one.  Honey  cakes  were  a  favour- 
ite food  with  the  ancients.  Aristophanes,  for  example,  in 
his  Birds,  pokes  fun  at  Herakles  for  being  so  fond  of  them. 

There  are  any  number  of  wells  in  the  British  Islands  at 
which  offerings  are  made;  the  following  will  serve  as  ex- 
amples. At  Sefton,  in  Lancashire,  it  was .  customary  for 
passers-by  to  drop  into  St.  Helen's  Well  a  new  pin  "  for 
good  luck,"  or  to  secure  the  favourable  issue  of  an  expressed 
wish.3  Pin-wells,  as  they  are  often  popularly  termed,  are 
found  in  several  places  in  Northumberland,  Yorkshire,  etc. 

1  R.  C.  Hope,  Legendary  Lore  of  the  Holy  Wells  of  England,  p.  204. 

2  Ibid.,  loc.  cit.,  p.  108. 

3  Baines,  Lancashire  and  Cheshire,  Past  and  Present,  iii.,  497  ;  Notes  and 
Queries,  5th  series,  x.,  p.  158. 


294 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


Henderson  informs  us  that  the  country  girls  imagine  that 
the  well  is  in  charge  of  a  fairy  or  spirit  who  must  be  pro- 
pitiated by  some  offering,  and  the  pin  presents  itself  as 
the  most  ready  or  convenient,  besides  having  a  special  suit- 
ableness as  being  made  of  metal.1 

In  many  places  in  the  north  of  England  pieces  of  rag, 
cloth,  or  ribbon  take  the  place  of  the  pins,  and  are  tied  to 
bushes  adjoining  the  wells. 

The  following  custom  pertained  to  the  "  Chapel  Well," 
or  "  Rag  Well,"  near  Great  Ayton,  in  Yorkshire: 

"  If  a  shirt  or  shift  taken  off  a  sick  person  be  thrown  into  this 
well,  it  will  show  whether  the  person  so  sick  will  recover  or  not. 
If  the  article  float,  it  denotes  the  recovery  of  the  person  to  whom 
it  belongs;  but  if  it  sink  there  is  no  hope  for  the  life  of  the  suf- 
ferer. To  reward  the  patron  saint  of  the  well  for  his  intelli- 
gence, a  rag  was  torn  off  from  the  garment  and  left  hanging 
upon  the  briars  thereabout,  '  where,'  says  the  writer  of  a  MS.  in 
the  Cottonian  Library,  '  I  have  seen  such  numbers  as  might 
have  made  a  fayre  rheme  in  a  paper  myll.'  "  a 

Mr.  G.  L.  Gomme  also  records  8  that  pin-wells  are  com- 
mon in  Wales.  Near  the  well  of  St.  ^Elian,  not  far  from 
Bettws  Abergeley  in  Denbighshire,  resided  a  woman  who 
officiated  as  a  kind  of  priestess.  Any  one  who  wished  to 
inflict  a  curse  upon  an  enemy  resorted  to  this  priestess,  and 
for  a  trifling  sum  she  registered  in  a  book  kept  for  the  pur- 
pose the  name  of  the  person  on  whom  the  curse  was  wished 
to  fall.  A  pin  was  then  dropped  into  the  well  in  the  name 
of  the  victim,  and  the  curse  was  complete. 

1  Henderson,  Folk-lore  of  the  Northern  Counties,  p.  230. 

8  Gentleman's  Magazine,  1823  ;  and  Gentleman's  Magazine  Library,  Super- 
stitions, pp.  143,  147.  Parkinson,  in  his  Yorkshire  Legends  and  Traditions, 
ii.,  1889,  p.  103,  says  that  this  did  not  happen  at  St.  Oswald's  Well,  near  the 
foot  of  Roseberry  Topping,  as  the  original  writer  states,  but  at  the  Rag  Well. 

2  Ethnology  in  Folk-lore,  pp.  86,  87. 


"DRAW  A    PAIL    OF    WATER"  295 

There  are  holy  wells  innumerable  in  Ireland,  most  of 
which  are  still  resorted  to  by  the  peasantry,  who  firmly  be- 
lieve in  their  efficacy.  On  the  northern  side  of  a  stream  that 
separates  Counties  Dublin  and  Wicklow  is  St.  Kevin's  Well, 
which  was  festooned  with  rags  when  I  visited  it.  Many  of 
these  rags  bore  unmistakable  evidence  of  having  been  re- 
moved from  sores.  I  noticed  one  rag  which  was  torn  off 
from  the  spot  where  the  garment  was  marked  with  its 
owner's  name,  so  that  in  this  case  the  spirit  of  the  well  could 
be  in  no  doubt  as  to  the  identity  of  the  patient. 

In  Aranmore,  the  largest  of  the  Aran  Islands,  in  Galway 
Bay,  are  numerous  "  blessed  places."  St.  Eany's  Well, 
which  is  overhung  by  a  bramble  adorned  with  rags,  is  re- 
sorted to  by  women  who  desire  to  have  children.  It  is 
beside  a  small  level  sward  (a  rare  occurrence  in  the  Aran 
Islands)  known  as  the  "  Angel's  Walk."  "  An'  it  's  here 
the  Guardian  Angels  of  Aran  come,  of  a  summer's  night,  to 
take  their  diversion."1  A  mile  or  two  away  is  the  holy 
well  attached  to  the  Church  of  the  Four  Comely  Saints. 
It  is  here  the  men  come  when  they  want  children.  To  the 
sprays  of  blackberry  and  ivy  which  overshadow  it  are  at- 
tached pieces  of  calico,  velvet,  whipcord,  etc.,  and  in  the 
well  itself  are  numerous  buttons,  fish-hooks,  nails,  and 
pieces  of  crockery,  glass,  etc.  ...  In  the  parish  of 
Kilmurvy  is  that  well,  known  as  Tuber  Carna,  at  which 
prayers  for  the  recovery  of  a  sick  person  are  answered,  and 
the  water  has  the  further  properties  of  not  being  boilable 
and  of  restoring  dead  fish  to  life.3 

The  processions  round  the  well  sunwise  are  an  important 
and  nearly  universal  part  of  the  ceremony  in  Ireland,  and, 
as  Gomme  3  points  out,  the  apparently  unimportant  detail 

1  Mary  Banim,  Here  and  There  through  Ireland,  1892,  p.  133. 
s  A.  C.  Haddon  and  C.  R.  Browne,  "  The  Ethnography  of  the  Aran  Islands, 
County  Galway,"  Proc.  Roy.  Irish  Acad.  (3),  ii.,  1S93,  p.  818. 
3  Ethnology  in  Folk-lore,  p.. 93. 


296  the  study  of  man 

occurring  in  a  Shropshire  example,1  of  pouring  water  over 
a  particular  stone,  receives  significant  light  from  the  ex- 
amples in  Ireland.  Thus  at  Dungiven  (in  County  Derry), 
after  hanging  their  offerings  of  rags  on  the  bush  adjoining 
the  well,  the  devotees  proceed  to  a  large  stone  in  the  River 
Roe,  immediately  below  the  old  church,  and,  having  per- 
formed an  ablution,  they  walk  round  the  stone,  bowing  to 
it  and  repeating  prayers,  and  then,  after  performing  a  similar 
ceremony  in  the  church,  they  finish  the  rite  by  a  procession 
and  prayer  round  the  upright  stone.2 

Out  of  a  large  possible  selection  of  Irish  holy  wells,  I  will 
conclude  with  one  or  two  examples  from  the  north.  There 
is  a  lyn,  or  pool,  in  the  stream  just  a  little  below  Kilgort 
Bridge,  near  Claudy,  County  Derry,  called  "  Turish  Hole," 
or  "  Turish  Lyn."  Some  people  still  believe  that  by  bath- 
ing in  this  pool,  cures  can  be  obtained  for  any  description  of 
disease,  and  there  are  traditions  that  cripples  have  been 
cured  at  this  place  and  left  their  crutches  behind  them  there. 
"  Back-going"  children  when  washed  in  this  pool  become 
healthy.  In  fact,  tradition  says  that  immersion  in  the 
pool  was  a  cure  for  all  manner  of  diseases,  sick-headache  in- 
cluded. The  date  of  the  ceremonies  is  May  Eve  (last  day 
in  April),  when  the  persons  wanting  a  cure  bathe  or  wash 
themselves  or  the  diseased  part  in  the  water  and  repeat  some 
prayers.  The  offerings,  which  are  of  different  kinds,  are 
left  in  a  bush  beside  the  lyn.  Often  a  piece  of  cloth  is  tied 
to  the  bush,  sometimes  a  lock  of  hair,  and  sometimes  three 

1  St.  Oswald's  Well,  at  Oswestry,  is  used  for  wishing  and  divination.  One 
rite,  says  Miss  Burne,  is  to  go  to  the  well  at  midnight,  take  some  water  up  in 
the  hand  and  drink  part  of  it,  at  the  same  time  forming  a  wish  in  the  mind, 
throw  the  rest  of  the  water  upon  a  particular  stone  at  the  back  of  the  well,  and 
if  the  votary  can  succeed  in  throwing  all  the  water  left  in  his  hand  upon  this 
stone  without  touching  any  other  spot  his  wish  will  be  fulfilled. — Ethnology  in 
Folk-lore,  p.  85. 

-Mason,  Statistical  Account  of  Ireland,  i.,  p.  328. 


"DRAW  A    PAIL    OF    WATER"  297 

white  stones  picked  up  from  the  pool.  It  is  not  known 
when  or  by  whom  the  lyn  was  blessed,  but  the  custom  of 
offering  prayers  there  indicates  that  the  people  regard  the 
place  as  holy.  Tradition  says  that  a  very  large  trout  was 
in  Turish-o-Lyn,  and  that  all  who  had  the  good  fortune  to 
see  it  on  May  Eve  were  sure  to  get  cured.  It  is  said  that 
this  trout  was  caught  by  some  man,  and  when  he  had  it  on 
the  coals  cooking  it  for  his  dinner  it  leaped  out  of  the  door 
and  went  back  to  its  lyn,  but  it  never  let  itself  be  seen  after- 
wards.1 The  tree  over  Cranfield  Well,  on  the  north  shore 
of  Lough  Neagh,  as  in  many  other  cases,  is  decorated  with 
old  rags,  and  crystals  of  carbonate  of  lime  are  found  in  the 
well,  which  are  said  to  be  very  lucky.2 

Gomme  3  gives  numerous  examples  of  Scottish  holy  wells. 
He  says : 

"  About  fifty  years  after  the  Reformation  it  was  noted  that  the 
wells  of  Scotland  '  were  all  tapestried  about  with  old  rags.'  4 
Only  one  or  two  instances  need  be  noted.  At  Toubermore  Well, 
in  Gigha  Isle,  devotees  were  accustomed  to  leave  a  piece  of 
money,  a  needle,  pin,  or  one  of  the  prettiest  variegated  stones 
they  could  find.6  In  Banffshire,  at  Montblairie,  '  many  still 
alive  remember  to  have  seen  the  impending  boughs  adorned  with 
rags  of  linen  and  woollen  garments,  and  the  well  enriched  with 
farthings  and  bodies,  the  offerings  of  those  who  came  from  afar 
to  the  Fountain.'  6  At  Wick  they  leave  a  piece  of  bread  and 
cheese  and  a  silver  coin,  which  they  alleged  disappeared  in  some 
mysterious  way.7      .     .     .     It   is   scarcely  necessary  to  pursue 

1  W.  Gray,  "  Our  Holy  Wells:  A  Folk-lore  Chapter,"  Proc.  Belfast  Nat. 
Field  Club  (2),  iv.,  1893-94,  p.  94. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  95. 

3  Ethnology  in  Folk-lore,  p.  95. 

4  The  Book  of  Bon  Accord,  p.  268. 

5  Martin's  Tour,  p.  230. 

6  Robertson,  Antiquities  of  Aberdeen  and  Banff,  ii.,  p.  310. 
1  Sinclair,  New  Statistical  Account  of  Scotland,  xv. ,  p.  161. 


298  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

these  details  with  greater  minuteness,  and  it  may  be  stated  as  a 
general  rule  that  '  at  all  these  fountains  the  invalid  used  the  same 
ceremonies,  approaching  them  sunwise,'  J  or  '  deisil,'  as  it  was 
called." 

Pai  ticularly  prominent  in  Scotland,  as  well  as  in  Ireland, 
was  this  obligation  to  approach  the  well  sunwise— that  is, 
in  the  same  direction  as  that  taken  by  the  hands  of  a  clock. 

The  votaries  often  bathed  in  holy  wells  or  sacred  pools, 
and  this  could  in  some  cases  only  be  done  after  sunset  and 
before  the  next  sunrise;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  at  certain 
wells  it  was  an  infallible  cure  for  almost  any  disease  to  bathe 
as  the  sun  rose  on  the  first  Sunday  in  May.  These  bathing 
customs  are  not  indicated  in  any  of  the  recorded  versions 
of  games.  The  water  that  was  drawn  in  the  bucket  may 
have  been  for  drinking,  or  for  washing  an  affected  part,  but 
actual  bathing  is  not  implied. 

The  injunction  of  silence  must  now  be  referred  to. 

"  At  Penpont,  in  Dumfriesshire,  the  emissary  of  the  patient 
has  to  go  through  a  most  careful  ceremonial.  When  he  reached 
the  well  he  '  had  to  draw  water  in  a  vessel,  which  was  on  no  ac- 
count to  touch  the  ground,  to  turn  himself  round  with  the  sun, 
to  throw  his  offering  to  the  spirit  over  his  left  shoulder,  and  to 
carry  the  water,  without  ever  looking  back,  to  the  sick  person. 
All  this  was  to  be  done  in  absolute  silence,  and  he  was  to  salute 
no  one  by  the  way. '  2  The  elements  of  magic  ritual  preserved 
here  are  very  obvious,  and  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  silence  is  a 
condition  imposed  upon  the  devotees  at  many  wells  in  Ireland, 
and  also  in  England."  3 

One  more  example  must  suffice.  The  Ffynnon  Cefn 
Lleithfan,  or  Well  of  the  Lleithfan  Ridge,  on  the  eastern 
slope  of  Mynydd  y  Rhiw,  in  the  west  of  Caernarvonshire,  is 

1  Forbes  Leslie,  Early  Races  of  Scotland,  i.,  p.  156. 

2  Martin,  Western  Islands,  p.  7.       3  Gomme,  Ethnology  in  Folk-lore,  p.  99. 


"DRAW  A   PAIL    OF    WATER"  299 

a  resort  for  the  cure  of  warts.  The  sacred  character  of  the 
well  may  be  inferred  from  the  silence  in  which  it  is  necessary 
to  go  and  come,  and  from  the  prohibition  to  turn  or  look 
back.  The  wart  is  to  be  bathed  in  the  well  with  a  rag  or 
clout  which  has  grease  on  it.  The  clout  must  then  be  care- 
fully concealed  beneath  the  stone  at  the  mouth  of  the  well.1 

The  association  of  a  bush  or  tree  with  a  holy  well  is  so 
common  as  to  be  practically  universal,  and  there  is  no  need 
to  dwell  upon  it. 

Mr.  Gomme,  in  his  very  suggestive  little  book,  Ethnology  in 
Folk-lore,  traces  the  distribution  of  holy  wells  in  the  British 
Islands.  Speaking  in  general  terms,  the  traces  of  well-wor- 
ship become  more  pronounced  and  more  primitive  in  charac- 
ter as  we  pass  from  east  to  west  in  the  British  Islands. 

In  the  east  of  England  no  distinct  ritual  remains,  and 
only  a  tradition  of  the  healing  qualities  of  a  particular  well 
or  spring,  or  even  its  bare  name,  remain ;  many  are  now 
quite  nameless. 

In  the  west  and  north  of  England  it  is  very  different,  and 
here  we  find  examples  of  garland-dressing  and  pin-offerings. 
In  Cornwall  and  Wales,  and  towards  the  northern  border, 
the  sacred  bush  by  the  well  is  decked  with  rags.  These 
rag-bushes  were  formerly  abundant  in  Scotland,  and  they 
still  occur  in  great  profusion  in  Ireland. 

To  speak  in  terms  of  races  :  this  well-cult  is  least  observed 
in  Teutonic  England,  but  it  is  retained  in  Celtic  England 
and  in  Celtic  Scotland,  Wales,  and  Ireland.  It  is  less 
modified  among  the  Goidelic  Celts  of  Scotland  and  Ireland 
than  among  the  Brythonic  Celts  of  Wales  and  South-west 
England ;  the  latter  are  regarded  by  Professor  Rhys  as  be- 
longing to  a  later  wave  of  Celtic  migration  than  the  Irish 
and  Scots. 

1  E.  Sydney  Hartland,  The  Legend  of  Perseus,  ii.,  1895,  p.  176  (quoting 
from  Prof.  Rhys). 


300  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

It  is,  however,  very  probable  that  well-worship  is  older 
than  the  Celtic  migration.  The  associated  custom  of  the 
offerings  of  rags  or  parts  of  clothing  upon  bushes  sacred  to 
the  well  has  been  investigated  with  regard  to  its  geographi- 
cal distribution  by  Mr.  Walhouse,1  and  it  is  certain  that  it 
occupies  a  much  wider  area  than  that  inhabited  by  Aryan 
peoples.  Thus,  to  quote  a  summary  given  by  General 
Pitt-Rivers:2 

"  Burton  says  it  extends  throughout  Northern  Africa  from  west 
to  east.  .  .  .  Burton  found  the  same  custom  in  Arabia 
during  his  pilgrimage  to  Mecca;  in  Persia  Sir  William  Ouseley 
saw  a  tree  close  to  a  large  monolith  covered  with  these  rags,  and 
he  describes  it  as  a  practice  appertaining  to  a  religion  long  since 
proscribed  in  that  country;  in  the  Deccan  and  Ceylon,  Colonel 
Leslie  says  that  the  trees  in  the  neighbourhood  of  wells  may  be 
seen  covered  with  similar  scraps  of  cotton;  Dr.  A.  Campbell 
speaks  of  it  as  being  practised  by  the  Limboos  near  Darjeeling, 
in  the  Himalaya,  where  it  is  associated,  as  in  Ireland,  with  large 
heaps  of  stones;  and  Hue  in  his  travels  mentions  it  among  the 
Tartars." 

"  Here,"  as  Gomme  points  out,  "  not  only  do  we  get  evidence 
of  the  cult  in  an  Aryan  country  like  Persia  being  proscribed,  but, 
as  General  Pitt-Rivers  observes,  '  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that 
so  singular  a  custom  as  this,  invariably  associated  with  cairns, 
megalithic  monuments,  holy  wells,  or  some  such  early  pagan 
institutions,  could  have  arisen  independently  in  all  these  coun- 
tries.' That  the  area  over  which  it  is  found  is  conterminous 
with  the  area  of  the  megalithic  monuments,  that  these  monu- 
ments take  us  back  to  pre-Aryan  people  and  suggest  the  spread 
of  this  people  over  the  area  covered  by  their  remains,  are  argu- 

1  M.  J.  Walhouse,  "  Rag-bushes  and  Kindred  Observances,"  Journ.  Anth. 
Inst.,  ix  ,  1879,  pp.  97-106. 

"Colonel  A.  Lane  Fox,  "The  Distribution  of  Megalithic  Structures/' 
Journ.  Ethnol.  Soc.  (N.  S.),  i.,  1869,  p.  64. 


"  DRAW  A    PAIL    OF    WATER"  30 1 

ments  in  favour  of  a  megalithic  date  for  well-worship   and  rag 
offerings."  ' 

The  persistence  of  this  cult  in  the  more  Celtic  portions  of 
the  British  Islands  is  then  probably  not  due  to  this  being  a 
religious  practice  of  the  Aryans, — who  were  more  addicted 
to  fire-worship, — but  to  the  fact  that  in  this  part  of  the  Em- 
pire we  have  distinct  traces  of  that  pre-Aryan  race  to  which 
I  have  so  often  referred  in  the  earlier  portion  of  this  book. 
The  Celtic  Aryans  who  invaded  the  British  Islands  could 
not  uproot  the  old  religion  ;  indeed,  the  converse  has  usually 
been  the  case.  It  is  known  that  in  various  parts  of  the 
world  the  conquerors  of  a  country  have  been  psychically 
conquered  by  the  people  they  have  beaten — thus  does  the 
spirit  revenge  itself  on  matter.  I  have  an  example  of  this 
in  my  mind  from  New  Guinea,  where  the  immigrant  Motu 
pay  tribute  to  the  sorcerers  of  the  Koitapu,  whose  territory 
they  have  invaded,  in  order  that  they  may  obtain  propitious 
winds.2  For,  after  all,  only  the  people  of  a  country  can  be 
expected  to  know  the  local  spirits;  and  new-comers,  whether 
as  traders  or  conquerors,  are  utterly  ignorant  of  the  correct 
way  to  entreat  or  appease  the  local  divinities.  We  may  re- 
gard it  as  pretty  certain  that  the  Celt  (to  use  this  somewhat 
vague  term)  absorbed  many  of  the  features  of  the  religion 
of  his  Neolithic  neighbours.     In  Ireland  and  Scotland  the 

1  Lor.  cit..  p.  106. 

2  "The  Koitapu  are  much  feared  by  the  Motu  because  of  their  supposed 
wonderful  power  over  sun,  rain,  heaven,  and  earth,  north-west  and  south-east 
monsoons  ;  specially  do  the  winds  belong  to  them.  .  .  .  They  are  no  doubt 
the  real  owners  of  the  soil.  .  .  .  By  no  conquest  do  the  Motuans  live  here, 
but  simply  because  the  Koitapuans  allow  them,  saying,  'Yours  is  the  sea,  the 
canoes,  and  the  nets  ;  ours  is  the  land  and  the  wallaby.  Give  us  fish  for  our 
flesh,  and  pottery  for  our  yams  and  bananas.'  "  (J.  Chalmers,  Pioneering  in 
New  Guinea,  i387,  p.  13  ;  cf.  also  A.  C.  Haddon,  "  The  Decorative  Art  of 
British  New  Guinea :  a  Study  in  Papuan  Ethnography,"  Cunningham  Memoir 
x.,  Roy.  Irish  Acad.,  1894,  pp.  156-164,  258-269.) 


302 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


Goidels  have  long  been  in  possession  of  the  soil,  but,  a^  has 
previously  been  suggested,  the  Saxon  invasion  appears  to 
have  pushed  the  Brythons  more  and  more  to  the  west. 
We,  however,  find  unmistakable  relics  of  water-worship  all 
over  the  British  Isles,  even  in  the  east  of  England,  which 
has,  so  to  speak,  been  glaciated  by  the  cold  common  sense 
of  the  Teutonic  invasion. 

Apart  from  religious  disposition  or  psychological  idiosyn- 
crasy, there  are  other  reasons  why  well-worship  should  per- 
sist in  the  "  Celtic  "  parts  of  the  British  Islands.  The  early 
11  missionaries  were  obliged,"  as  Mr.  Gray  points  out,  "  as 
a  matter  of  policy  to  adopt  a  compromise,  retaining  such 
popular  rites  and  customs  as  were  considered  innocent 
amusements,  and  engrafting  upon  them  the  introduced 
formalities  of  the  Christian  ritual."  '  The  teachers  of  the 
new  doctrine  were  not  of  a  very  different  stage  of  culture 
from  those  they  sought  to  convert;  they  had  not  those 
material  benefits  and  luxuries  of  a  high  civilisation  which 
gave  to  the  missionaries  of  last  century  such  a  tremendous 
advantage  over  the  savages  they  evangelised.  In  the  one 
case,  Christianity  had  to  be  engrafted  craftily  and  circum- 
spectly on  to  paganism,  as  its  visible  benefits  were  not  suffi- 
ciently apparent  to  appeal  to  the  more  materially  minded 
mass  of  the  people.  In  the  other  case,  there  was  no  point 
of  contact  between  the  two  conditions,  and,  as  a  rule, 
savages  do  not  realise  a  distinction  between  secular  and 
sacred,  between  social  duties  and  religious  functions:  so 
when  these  primitive  folk  came  into  contact  with  the  mis- 
sionaries they  were  ready  to  embrace  the  religious  tenets 
and  the  higher  culture  of  the  white  man — and  the  Protest- 
ant evangelists  insisted  only  too  well  that  the  past  should 
be  completely  erased.  Thus  the  old  culture  (for  they  had 
culture),  the  old  morality  (for  they  had  morality,  though  it 

1  Proc.  Belfast  Nat.  Field  Club  (2),  iv.,  p.  92. 


"  DRAW  A   PAIL    OF    WATER"  503 

may  not  have  been  the  morality  of  the  white  man),  and  the 
old  religion  were  slipped  off  like  old  garments,  and  life  had 
virtually  to  begin  afresh,  clothed  in  the  new  garb  of  an  alien 
civilisation  and  inspired  by  an  exotic  religion. 

How  different  was  the  policy  enforced  by  Pope  Gregory, 
as  embodied  in  a  letter  written  about  the  year  601  A.D., 
and  addressed  "  To  his  most  beloved  son,  the  Abbot  Melli- 
tus,"  who  was  sent  by  the  Pope  to  Augustine,  first  Bishop 
of  Canterbury.  Under  the  policy  thus  recommended  the 
feasting  and  amusements  that  followed  the  old  pagan  rites 
were  tolerated,  "to  the  end  that  whilst  some  gratifications 
are  outwardly  permitted  them,  they  may  the  more  easily 
consent  to  the  inward  consolations  of  the  grace  of  God."  ' 

"Unfortunately  the  'gratifications'  thus  'permitted'  the 
early  converts  became  afterwards  the  chief  attraction  on  the 
day  of  dedication,  and  the  religious  observances  on  the  patron's 
day  degenerated  into  the  '  pattern  '  or  '  fair  '  that  subsequently 
became  the  fruitful  source  of  riot  and  disorder  down  to  our 
own  day.  This  pattern  or  fair  originated  with  the  trade  carried 
on  in  former  times  by  those  who  provided  refreshments  for  the 
people  who  assembled  at  the  wells  or  places  dedicated  to  some 
saint  who  became  the  patron  of  the  place,  and  this  annual 
gathering  on  the  patron's  day  was  called  a  '  pattern  '  [in  Ire- 
land]. The  original  intention  was  for  worship  and  religious 
festivities,  but  the  festive  soon  absorbed  the  religious  element, 
and  all  forms  of  abuses  followed,  and  hence  the  gatherings 
were  condemned  by  the  Church.  The  early  Christians  strongly 
condemned  the  old  pagan  rites  and  ceremonies  connected  with 
wells,  rivers,  and  fountains,  mainly  because  of  the  riotous  ex- 
cesses in  which  the  votaries  indulged.  Making  offerings  to 
wells,  trees,  and  earthfast  rocks  is  denounced  in  a  Saxon  homily 
preserved  at  Cambridge  University  Library."  ' 

1  Bede's  Ecclesiastical  History,  book  i.,  chap.  xxx. 

2  W.  Gray,  loc.  cit.,  p.  92. 


304 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


As  Mr.  Gray  points  out,  in  the  early  annals  of  Ireland 
there  are  many  references  to  wells,  and  their  use  in  the 
baptism  of  early  converts.  In  Dr.  Reeves's  Vita  St.  Coliun- 
bce  Auctore  Adamnanowe  find  that  St.  Columba  strove  against 
the  Magii  (Druids)  at  a  well  in  the  country  of  the  Picts. 
He  exorcised  the  heathen  demon  of  the  well,  which  there- 
after, as  a  holy  fountain,  cured  many  diseases.1  In  the  Life 
of  St.  Columbkillc,  preserved  in  the  Lcabliar  Breac  in  the 
library  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy  in  Dublin,  it  is  said : 

"  He  blessed  three  hundred  miraculous  crosses: 

He  blessed  three  hundred  wells  that  were  constant." 

We  have,  therefore,  abundant  evidence  that  well-  or 
fountain-worship  was  extremely  rife  in  the  British  Islands 
before  Christianity  was  introduced,  and  that  the  early  mis- 
sionaries were  instructed  not  to  root  up  the  old  religion 
before  replacing  it  with  the  new.  We  know  that  these  good 
men  took  up  their  abode  by  the  side  of  a  sacred  well,  ap- 
preciating the  fact  that  as  the  sacred  waters  would  be  con- 
tinually visited,  so  they  would  always  have  devotees  to 
instruct.  Thus  it  came  about  that  the  wells  mostly  retained 
their  old  virtue,  but  the  sanctity  was  annexed  by  the  mis- 
sionaries, and  in  later  times  the  waters  almost  invariably 
bore  their  names.  One  point  is  clear, — the  holiness  and 
efficacy  of  the  wells  were  in  the  vast  majority,  if  not  in  all 
cases,  pre-Christian  and  probably  also  pre-Celtic. 

The  question  next  arises,  Why  were  springs  or  streams 
considered  holy  ? 

Savages  are  not  fools ;  their  ways  may  not  be  as  our  ways, 
or  their  thoughts  as  our  thoughts,  but  there  is  something  at 
the  back  of  their  beliefs  and  customs,  if  we  could  only  get 
at  it.     The   persistent  forms  of  water -cult  in  the  British 

1  The  Life  of  St.  Columba,  Founder  of  Hy  ;  written  by  Adamnan.  Ed.  by 
W.  Reeves,  Dublin,  1857,  p.  119. 


"  DRAW  A   PAIL   OF    WATER"  305 

Islands  open  up  many  and  interesting  problems  which  can- 
not now  be  considered. 

By  far  the  majority  of  the  customs  are  related  with  the 
reputed  healing  powers  of  the  well  or  spring,  but  there  are 
traces  of  other  virtues,  such  as  a  connection  between  well- 
worship  and  the  worship  of  a  rain-god,  as  Mr.  Gomme  has 
suggested.1 

There  is  common  sense  in  the  association  of  curative 
powers  with  water.  It  is  well  known  that  the  wounds  of 
primitive  peoples  heal  with  amazing  rapidity ;  wounds  that 
would  be  of  a  most  serious  character  amongst  ourselves 
heal  almost  of  themselves  when  the  body  is  in  rude  health 
and  when  the  air  and  clothes  are  practically  free  from  putre- 
factive microbes.  All  that  is  necessary  is  to  wash  impurities 
out  of  the  wounds.  It  is  most  probable  that  the  uncultured 
mind  would  attribute  the  healing  of  the  wound  to  the  water, 
and  not  to  the  removal  of  dirt. 

Many  of  these  sacred  springs  have  distinct  medicinal 
qualities ;  their  water  is  impregnated  with  salts  of  various 
kinds ;  there  are  sulphur  and  iron  waters,  chalybeate  springs, 
and  so  forth.  Experience  has  shown  that  these  have  defin- 
ite curative  properties,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  these 
were  early  recognised. 

A  perennial  supply  of  pure  water  has  ever  been  appre- 
ciated by  man,  and  it  would  always  be  remarked  if  a  spring 
continued  to  flow  when  others  ran  dry. 

It  would  naturally  be  argued,  there  must  be  some  reason 
for  it,  and,  as  always  happens,  some  explanation  would  be 
forthcoming.  Such  a  spring  was  pointed  out  to  me  in  the 
island  of  Mabuiag,  in  Torres  Straits,  and  it  arose  in  this  way: 
One  day,  Kwoiam,  the  legendary  hero  of  the  island,  was 
thirsty,  and  he  thrust  his  javelin  into  the  rock,  and  water 
has  gushed   forth   ever  since.     Before  running  away  as  a 

1  Ethnology  hi  Folk-lore,  p.  94. 


306  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

stream  the  water  fills  two  small  rock  pools.  Any  one  may 
drink  from  the  lower  basin,  but  only  old  men  or  "  big" 
men  may  drink  from  the  upper,  the  penalty  being  premature 
greyness.  I  asked  whether  I  might  be  permitted  to  drink 
from  the  upper  pool,  and  I  was  told  that  I  might,  but  evi- 
dently I  was  not  worthy  of  the  honour,  as  I  have  paid  the 
penalty ! 

There  is  no  need  to  say  more.  The  advantages  of  a 
perennial  spring,  the  undoubted  healing  properties  of  many 
wells,  and  the  cleansing  functions  of  all,  are  benefits  to  be 
devoutly  thankful  for.  An  expectant  attitude  of  mind,  the 
'*  suggestion  "  of  modern  psychology,  and  those  obscure 
mental  conditions  which  all  recognise  who  have  impartially 
considered  the  V  miracles  "  worked  at  shrines  even  in  our 
own  day — these  have  always  been  operative  in  addition  to 
the  more  material  benefits  of  the  water,  and  so  has  inevit- 
ably grown  up  a  recognition  of  virtue  in  the  water. 

Primitive  folk  do  not  draw  a  sharp  distinction  between 
things  animate  and  inanimate;  this  is  an  essential  fact  to 
remember  when  we  consider  their  religious  beliefs  and  prac- 
tices. The  bubbling  spring,  the  running  brook,  the  waving 
boughs,  the  rushing  wind,  the  burning  sun,  the  sparkling 
stars,  are  all  as  much  alive  as  far  as  they  can  tell  as  are  men 
or  animals.  Man,  too,  feels  himself  weak  before  the  forces 
of  nature;  he  by  no  means  has  subjugated  nature;  he  does 
not  yet  possess  the  earth.  As  his  forceful  fellow-men  have 
to  be  appeased,  so  must  the  activities  outside  man  be  ap- 
peased or  interested  in  his  favour.  The  appreciation  of  the 
vast  unknown  all  around  him  gives  origin  to  the  feeling  that 
it  is  essential  for  his  welfare  that  he  should  be  put  into 
friendly  or  harmonious  relation  with  those  powers  which 
can  benefit  him  and  may  do  him  harm,  and  so  Religion  is 
born  into  the  world. 

Morality  may  be  regarded  as  the  acknowledgment  of  the 


"DRAW  A    PAIL    OF    WATER"  307 

claims  others  have  on  our  conduct.  According  to  this  view- 
it  is  the  quintessence  of  etiquette,  the  habit  which  any- 
particular  society  has  found  to  work  well  in  practical  experi- 
ence.     In  other  words,  it  is  the  working  basis  of  society. 

Religion,  on  the  other  hand,  has  originally  nothing  to  do 
with  morality, — of  this  there  is  abundant  proof, — but  it  has 
for  its  aim  the  putting  of  man  into  harmonious  relations 
with  the  forces  outside  him.  It  is  how  this  can  be  accom- 
plished, and  the  various  conceptions  that  have  arisen  con- 
cerning these  outside  forces,  that  constitute  the  science  of 
Comparative  Religion. 

We  are  now  beginning  to  realise  that  this  is  the  true  "  in- 
wardness "  of  many  so-called  "  savage"  conceptions  and 
rituals.  At  first  there  is  a  vague  feeling-after  if  haply  some- 
thing may  be  found,  and  it  is  from  this  nebulous  state  that 
systems  have  been  evolved. 

The  application  of  this  principle  to  the  subject  of  sacred 
wells  and  the  offerings  made  at  them  has  been  so  ably 
stated  by  my  friend  Mr.  Hartland  in  the  chapter  "  On 
Sacred  Wells  and  Trees  "  in  his  great  work  on  The  Legend 
of  Perseus,1  that  I  do  not  hesitate  to  transcribe  his  general 
conclusions: 

"  To  sum  up: — We  find  widely  spread  in  Europe  the  practice 
of  throwing  pins  into  sacred  wells,  or  sticking  pins  or  nails  into 
sacred  images  or  trees,  or  into  the  wall  of  a  temple,  or  floor  of  a 
church,  and — sometimes  accompanying  this,  more  usually  alone — 
a  practice  of  tying  rags  or  leaving  portions  of  clothing  upon  a 
sacred  tree  or  bush,  or  a  tree  or  bush  overhanging,  or  adjacent 
to,  a  sacred  well,  or  of  depositing  them  in  or  about  the  well. 

11  The  object  of  this  rite  is  generally  the  attainment  of  some 
wish,  or  the  granting  of  some  prayer,  as  for  a  husband  or  for 
recovery  from  sickness. 

1  Vol.  ii.,  pp.  175-231. 


308  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  In  Asia  we  have  the  corresponding  customs  of  writing  the 
name  on  the  walls  of  a  temple,  suspending  some  apparently 
trivial  article  upon  the  boughs  of  a  sacred  tree,  flinging  pellets  of 
chewed  paper  or  stones  at  sacred  images,  and  attaching  rags, 
writings,  and  other  things  to  the  temples,  and  to  trees.  Trees 
are  adorned  in  the  same  way,  with  rags  and  other  useless  things, 
in  Africa — a  practice  not  unknown,  though  rare,  in  America. 
On  the  Congo  a  nail  is  driven  into  an  idol  in  the  Breton  manner. 
It  cannot  be  doubted  that  the  purpose  and  origin  of  all  these 
customs  are  identical,  and  that  an  explanation  of  one  will  explain 
all. 

"  The  most  usual  explanations  are:  First,  that  the  articles  left 
are  offerings  to  the  god  or  presiding  spirit;  and,  secondly,  that 
they  contain  the  disease  of  which  one  desires  to  be  rid,  and  trans- 
fer it  to  any  one  who  touches  and  removes  them.  Professor  Rhys 
suggests  that  a  distinction  is  to  be  drawn  between  the  pins  and 
the  rags.  The  pins,  he  thinks,  may  be  offerings;  and  it  is  note- 
worthy that  in  some  cases  they  are  replaced  by  buttons  or  small 
coins.  The  rags,  on  the  other  hand,  may  be,  in  his  view,  the 
vehicles  of  the  disease.  If  this  opinion  were  correct,  one  would 
expect  to  find  both  ceremonies  performed  by  the  same  patient  at 
the  same  well:  he  would  throw  in  the  pin,  and  also  place  the 
rag  on  the  bush,  or  wherever  its  proper  place  might  be.  The 
performance  of  both  ceremonies  is,  however,  I  think,  exceptional. 
Where  the  pin  or  button  is  dropped  into  the  well,  the  patient 
does  not  trouble  about  the  rag,  and  vice  versa. 

"  Nor  can  we  stop  here.  From  all  we  know  of  the  process  of 
ceremonial  decay,  we  may  be  tolerably  sure  that  the  rags  repre- 
sent entire  articles  of  clothing,  which  at  an  earlier  period  were 
deposited.  There  is  no  need  to  discuss  here  the  principle  of 
substitution  and  representation,  so  familiar  to  all  students  of  folk- 
lore. It  is  sufficient  to  point  out  that,  since  the  rite  is  almost 
everywhere  in  a  state  of  decay,  the  presumption  is  in  favour  of 
entire  garments  having  been  originally  deposited;  and  that,  in 
fact,  we  do  find  this  original  form  of  the  rite  in  ancient  and 
several  modern  examples.     Such  was  a  chalybeate  spring  in  the 


"  DRAW  A    PAIL    OF    WATER"  309 

parish  of  Kennethmont,  Aberdeenshire.  As  its  virtue  was  in- 
voked not  only  for  human  beings,  but  for  cattle,  the  tribute  con- 
sisted of  '  part  of  the  clothes  of  the  sick  and  diseased,  and  harness 
of  the  cattle.' 

"  M.  Monseur  1  suggests  that  in  those  instances  in  which  pins 
or  nails  were  stuck  into  the  cross,  or  tree,  or  figure  of  the  saint, 
the  aim  was,  by  causing  pain  or  inconvenience  to  the  object  of 
worship,  to  keep  in  his  memory  the  worshipper's  prayer.  M. 
Gaidoz  2  has  another  theory.  He  says:  '  The  idol  is  a  god,  who 
always  appears  somewhat  stupid;  it  moves  not,  it  speaks  not,  and, 
peradventure,  it  does  not  hear  very  well.  It  must  be  made  to 
understand  by  a  sign,  and  a  sign  which  will  be  at  the  same  time 
a  memento.  In  touching  the  idol,  especially  in  touching  the 
member  corresponding  to  that  which  suffers,  its  attention  is 
directed  to  the  prayer.  And  more  than  that  is  done  in  leaving 
a  nail  or  a  pin  in  its  body,  for  this  is  a  material  memento  for  the 
idol. '  In  putting  it  in  this  way,  the  learned  professor  does  not 
desire  to  exclude  the  ideas  of  an  offering  and  a  transfer  of  dis- 
ease, for  he  expressly  adds  that  both  these  ideas  are  mingled  with 
that  of  a  memento." 

Mr.  Hartland  continues:  "  I  believe  that  a  profounder  thought 
forms  the  common  ground  in  which  all  the  customs  under  con- 
sideration— or,  as  I  should  prefer  to  say,  all  the  variations  of  a 
single  custom — are  rooted.  They  are  simply  another  application 
of  the  reasoning  that  underlies  the  practices  of  witchcraft  and 
folk-medicine  discussed  in  previous  chapters  [of  The  Legend  of 
Perseus].  If  an  article  of  my  clothing  in  a  witch's  hands  may 
cause  me  to  suffer,  the  same  article  in  contact  with  a  beneficent 
power  may  relieve  my  pain,  restore  me  to  health,  or  promote  my 
general  prosperity.  A  pin  that  has  pricked  my  wart,  even  if  not 
covered  with  my  blood,  has,  by  its  contact,  by  the  wound  it  has 
inflicted,  acquired  a  peculiar  bond  with  the  wart;  the  rag  that 
has  rubbed  the  wart  has  by  that  friction  acquired  a  similar  bond; 

1  Bulletin  de  Folk-lore,  Organe  de  la  Socie'te'  du  Folk-lore  Wallon,  i.,  1892, 
p.  250. 

2  M/lusine,  vi.,  1893,  155. 


310  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

so  that  whatever  is  done  to  the  pin  or  the  rag,  whatever  influ- 
ences the  pin  or  the  rag  may  undergo,  the  same  influences  are  by 
that  very  act  brought  to  bear  upon  the  wart.  If,  instead  of  using 
a  rag,  I  rub  my  warts  with  raw  meat  and  then  bury  the  meat,  the 
warts  will  decay  and  disappear  with  the  decay  and  dissolution  of 
the  meat.  In  like  manner  my  shirt  or  stocking,  or  a  rag  to  repre- 
sent it,  placed  upon  a  sacred  bush,  or  thrust  into  a  sacred  well — 
my  name  written  upon  the  walls  of  a  temple — a  stone  or  pellet 
from  my  hand  cast  upon  a  sacred  image  or  a  sacred  cairn — a  rem- 
nant of  my  food  cast  into  a  sacred  waterfall  or  bound  upon  a 
sacred  tree,  or  a  nail  from  my  hand  driven  into  the  trunk  of  the 
tree — is  thenceforth  in  continual  contact  with  divinity;  and  the 
effluence  of  divinity,  reaching  and  involving  it,  will  reach  and 
involve  me.  In  this  way  I  may  become  permanently  united  with 
the  god. 

"  This  is  an  explanation  which  I  think  will  cover  every  case. 
Of  course,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  are  instances  where,  the 
real  object  of  the  rite  having  been  forgotten,  the  practice  has  be- 
come to  a  slight  extent  deflected  from  its  earlier  form.  But  it  is 
not  difficult  to  trace  the  steps  whereby  the  idea  and  practice  of 
divination  became  substituted  for  that  of  union  with  the  object 
of  devotion.  Still  less  can  it  be  denied  that,  where  the  practice 
has  not  been  deflected,  the  real  intention  has  in  most  places  been 
obscured.  These  phenomena  are  familiar  to  us  everywhere,  and 
will  mislead  no  one  who  understands  that  the  real  meaning  is  not 
what  the  people  who  practise  a  rite  say  about  it,  but  that  which 
emerges  from  a  comparison  of  analogous  observances."  ' 

Mr.  Hartland,  doubtless  in  order  not  to  complicate  his 
argument,  refers  to  the  "god"  of  the  fountain,  but  he 
would  be  the  first  to  recognise  that  this  is  by  no  means  the 
earliest  conception.  So  far  as  I  understand  the  ideas  of 
primitive  folk  I  should  imagine  the  sequence  to  be  some- 
what as  follows : 

1  J.  Sidney  Hartland,  The  Legend  of  Perseus  :   A    Study  of  Tradition  in 
Story,  Custom  and  Belief  ,  3  vols.     D.  Nutt,  London,  1894-96. 


"  DRA  W  A    PAIL   OF    WA  PER  "  3 1 1 

The  spring  or  the  stream  were  entities  in  the  same  way  as 
human  beings,  animals,  or  plants.  When  the  conception 
arose  of  a  dual  (or  multiple)  nature  in  man,  when,  to  put  it 
concisely,  man  was  recognised  as  a  body  and  an  indwelling 
spirit,  then  the  same  conception  would  probably  be  trans- 
ferred to  the  other  entities,  and  hence  would  arise  the  belief 
in  a  spirit  of  a  fountain  or  of  a  tree,  which  doubtless  was  as 
much  its  own  innate  spirit  as  is  the  spirit  of  man.  As  the 
spirit  of  man  can,  according  to  savage  belief,  take  upon 
itself  various  outward  and  bodily  forms,1  so  there  is  no  reason 
why  the  equivalent  spirit  of  a  well  may  not  do  the  same. 
It  was  a  matter  of  common  experience  that  some  aqua- 
tic animal  inhabited  a  particular  piece  of  water — one  or  more 
fish,  a  frog,  or  whatever  it  may  have  been.  The  natural 
conclusion  was  that  the  divine  life  of  the  waters,  as  Robert- 
son Smith  2  says,  resided  in  the  sacred  fish  that  inhabited 
them ;  of  this  he  gives  numerous  examples  analogous  to  the 
Irish  and  Scottish.  Gomme  3  quotes  from  Sinclair4  a  most 
remarkable  example  of  this,  which  occurs  at  a  well  near  the 
church  of  Kirkmichael  in  Banffshire.  The  guardian  of  the 
well  assumed  the  semblance  of  a  fly,  who  was  always 
present,  and  whose  every  movement  was  regarded  by  the 
votaries  at  the  shrine  with  silent  awe,  and  as  he  appeared 
cheerful  or  dejected  the  anxious  votaries  drew  their  pre- 
sages. This  guardian  of  the  well  of  St.  Michael  was  be- 
lieved to  be  exempt  from  the  laws  of  mortality.  "  To  the 
eye  of  the  ignorant,"  says  the  local  account,  "  he  might 

1  There  is  no  need  to  take  up  my  reader's  time  with  illustrations  of  this 
proposition,  as  they  will  be  found  garnered  in  such  works  as  J.  G.  Frazer's 
Golden  Bough,  ii.,  "  The  External  Soul  in  Folk-Tales,"  p.  296,  and  E.  S. 
Hartland's  The  Legend  of  Perseus,  ii.,  "  The  Life-token  in  Tale  and  Custom," 
p.  1. 

3  W.  Robertson  Smith,  Lectures  on  the  Religion  of  the  Semites,  1889,  p.  161. 

3  Ethnology  in  Folk-lore,  p.  102. 

4  Statistical  Account  of  Scotland,  xii.,  p.  465. 


312  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

sometimes  appear  dead,  but  it  was  only  a  transmigration 
into  a  similar  form,  which  made  little  alteration  to  the  real 
identity." 

Later  beliefs  anthropomorphised  these  spirits,  and  we  have 
water-fairies,  nymphs,  and  the  like.  Finally,  some  mission- 
ary or  hermit  became  associated  with  the  well,  and  its  thera- 
peutic properties  were  attributed  to  the  blessing  of  the  water 
by  the  saint. 

We  may  trace,  then,  in  this  simple  game,  the  attenuated 
survival  of  a  religious  rite,  which  was  observed  by  our  savage 
forefathers  of  the  Polished-Stone  period.  In  children's 
games,  or  as  faithfully  performed  practices  by  the  folk, 
this  cult  has  survived  the  waves  of  migration  and  the  floods 
of  race-conflict ;  even  Christianity  itself  has  scarcely  pre- 
vailed against  it. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

COURTING  GAMES 

MARRIAGE  and  its  preliminaries  form  such  an  epoch 
in  life  that  it  would  be  strange  if  we  did  not  find 
them  mimicked  in  the  games  of  children.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  courtship  and  marriage  do  constitute  a  very  important 
element  in  these  hitherto  unwritten  dramas;  and  it  is  most 
interesting  to  find  that  customs  belonging  to  various  strata 
of  culture  are  enshrined  in  song  and  game.  In  other  words, 
our  children  still  commemorate  methods  of  courtship  which 
presumably  belonged  to  different  races  and  which  certainly 
were  in  vogue  during  diverse  ages. 

One  of  the  singing  games  most  frequently  played  by  child- 
ren is  that  known  as  "  Nuts  in  May."  This  seems  at  first 
sight  a  nonsensical  title  to  a  not  very  exciting  game,  but  we 
shall  find  that  there  is  plenty  of  interest  in  the  game,  to 
adults  as  well  as  to  children. 

"  Here  we  come  gathering  nuts  in  May, 
Nuts  in  May,  nuts  in  May, 
Here  we  come  gathering  nuts  in  May, 
May,  May,  May." 

"  Whom  will  you  have  for  nuts  in  May, 
Nuts  in  May,  nuts  in  May  ? 
Whom  will  you  have,  for  nuts  in  May, 
May,  May,  May  ?  " 
313 


314                                    THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 
11 for  nuts  in  May, 


Nuts  in  May,  nuts  in  May, 

for  nuts  in  May, 

May,  May,  May." 

1  ■  Very  well,  very  well,  so  you  may, 
So  you  may,  so  you  may, 
Very  well,  very  well,  so  you  may, 
May,  may,  may. 

"  Whom  will  you  have  to  take  her  away, 
Take  her  away,  take  her  away  ? 
Whom  will  you  have  to  take  her  away, 
Way,  way,  way?  " 

" to  take  her  away, 

Take  her  away,  take  her  away, 

to  take  her  away, 

Way,  way,  way." 

The  children  form  in  two  lines  of  equal  length,  facing  one 
another,  with  sufficient  space  between  the  lines  to  admit  of 
their  walking  in  line  backwards  and  forwards,  towards  and 
away  from  each  other,  as  each  line  sings  the  verses  allotted 
to  it.  The  first  line  sings  the  first,  third,  and  sixth  verses, 
and  the  opposite  line  the  second,  fourth,  and  fifth.  At  the 
end  of  the  sixth  verse  a  handkerchief  or  other  mark  is  laid 
on  the  ground,  and  the  two  children  (whose  names  have 
been  mentioned,  and  who  are  as  evenly  matched  as  possible) 
take  each  other's  right  hand  and  endeavour  to  pull  each 
other  over  the  handkerchief  to  their  own  side.  The  child 
who  is  pulled  over  the  handkerchief  becomes  the  "  captured 
nut,"  and  joins  the  side  of  her  capturers.  Then  the  game 
begins  again  by  the  second  line  singing  the  first,  third,  and 
sixth  verses,  while  advancing  to  gather  or  capture  the 
**  nuts,"  the  first  line  responding  with  the  other  verses,  and 


COURTING   GAMES  315 

with  the  same  finish  as  before.  Then  the  first  line  begins 
the  game,  and  so  on  until  all  the  children  are  in  this  way 
matched  one  against  the  other. 

Almost  the  only  variants  in  the  song  are  in  the  last  line 
of  each  verse,  which  may  run — "  On  a  cold  and  frosty 
morning  "  (which  I  have  heard  in  Cambridgeshire),  "  On  a 
fine  summer's  morning,"  "  So  early  in  the  morning,"  etc. 

The  game  is  always  played  in  lines,  and  the  principal  in- 
cidents running  through  all  the  versions  are  the  same,  i.e., 
one  player  is  selected  by  one  line  of  players  from  her  oppo- 
nents' party.  The  "  selected  "  one  is  refused  by  her  party, 
unless  someone  from  the  opposite  side  can  effect  her  capture 
by  a  contest  of  strength.  In  all  but  two  or  three  versions 
this  contest  takes  place  between  the  two ;  in  one  or  two  all 
the  players  join  in  the  trial  of  strength.  Sometimes  the 
side  which  is  victorious  has  the  right  to  begin  the  next 
game  first.  In  one  version,  when  one  child  is  drawn  over 
the  boundary  line  by  one  from  the  opposite  side,  she  has  to 
be  "  crowned  "  immediately.  This  is  done  by  the  con- 
queror putting  her  hand  on  the  captured  one's  head.  If 
this  is  not  done  at  once  the  latter  can  return  to  her  own 
side.  In  some  versions  the  player  who  is  selected  for 
"  Nuts  "  is  always  captured  by  the  one  sent  to  fetch  her. 
When  boys  and  girls  play,  the  boys  are  always  sent  to 
"  fetch  away  "  the  girls. 

Mrs.  Gomme,  from  whose  monograph  '  I  have  abstracted 
the  foregoing  account,  points  out  that  there  is  some  analogy 
in  the  game  to  marriage  by  capture  and  to  the  marriage 
customs  practised  at  May  Day  festivals.  She  attributes  the 
term  "  Nuts  in  May  "  to  the  gathering  by  parties  of  young 
men  of  bunches  of  may  at  the  May  festivals  and  dances, 
to  decorate  not  only  the  May-pole,  or  the  May  "  kissing- 
bush,"  but  the  doors  of  houses.      Nuts  is  a  misapprehension 

1  A.  B.  Gomme,  Traditional  Games,  i.,  p.  431. 


316  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

of  knots.  In  Buckinghamshire  the  children  speak  of  "  knots 
of  may,"  meaning  each  little  bunch  of  hawthorn  blossom. 
Mrs.  Gomme  has  heard  the  "  May  girls  "  sing  in  London 
on  May  Day — 

"  Knots  of  may  we  've  brought  you, 
Before  your  door  it  stands; 
It  is  but  a  sprout,  but  it  's  well  budded  out 
By  the  work  of  the  Lord's  hands." 

The  gathering  of  bunches  of  may  by  parties  of  young 
men  and  maidens  to  make  the  May-bush  round  which  May 
Day  games  were  held,  and  dancing  and  courting,  is  men- 
tioned by  Sir  William  Wilde.1 

Mrs.  Gomme  continues: 

11  The  association  of  May — whether  the  month,  or  the  flower, 
or  both — with  the  game  is  very  strong,  the  refrain,  '  Cold  and 
frosty  morning,'  '  All  on  a  summer's  morning,'  '  Bright  summer's 
morning,'  '  So  early  in  the  morning,'  also  being  characteristic  of 
the  early  days  of  May  and  spring,  and  suggests  that  the  whole 
day,  from  early  hours,  is  given  up  to  holiday."  2 

For  the  evidence  for  marriage  by  capture  in  the  game, 
there  is  no  element  of  love  or  courtship,  though  there  is  the 
obtaining  possession  of  a  member  of  an  opposing  party.  It 
differs  from  ordinary  contest-games  in  the  fact  that  one 
party  does  not  wage  war  against  another  party  for  posses- 
sion of  a  particular  piece  of  ground,  but  individual  against 
individual  for  the  possession  of  an  individual.  That  the 
player  sent  to  fetch  the  selected  girl  is  expected  to  conquer 
seems  to  be  implied — first,  by  a  choice  of  a  certain  player 
being  made  to  effect  the  capture ;  secondly,  by  the  one  sent 
to  "fetch"  being  always  successful;  and,  thirdly,  the 
**  crowning  "  in  one  version. 

1  Irish  Popular  Superstitions,  p.  52.  2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  432. 


0 
COURTING   GAMES  317 

Marriage  by  capture  is  still  practised  in  Australia  and  a 
few  other  places.  In  many  savage  and  barbaric  countries 
the  bride  makes  a  show  of  resistance,  resorting  in  some 
cases  to  physical  force,  though  all  the  time  willing  to  be 
married,  and  there  is  frequently  a  sham  fight  between  the 
relatives  of  the  bride  and  bridegroom,  and  there  are  actual 
survivals  in  English,  Scottish,  Welsh,  and  Irish  customs  of 
marriage  by  capture. 

Marriage  by  capture  is  now  in  the  main  a  thing  of  the 
past,  but  there  are  records  and  survivals  which  prove  it  at 
one  time  to  have  been  very  widely  spread. 

"  All  the  Carib  tribes  used  to  capture  women  from  different 
peoples  and  tribes,  so  that  the  men  and  women  nowhere  spake 
the  same  tongue,  and  Von  Martius  states  that  in  Brazil  '  some 
tribes  habitually  steal  their  neighbours'  daughters.'  Among  the 
tribes  of  Eastern  Central  Africa,  described  by  Macdonald,  mar- 
riage by  capture  occurs  not  as  a  symbol  only." 

According  to  a  common  belief,  the  Australian  method  of 
obtaining  wives  is  capture  in  its  most  brutal  form.  But 
contrary  to  Mr.  Howitt,  Mr.  Curr  informs  us  that  only  on 
rare  occasions  is  a  wife  captured  from  another  tribe  and 
carried  off.  The  possession  of  a  stolen  woman  would  lead 
to  constant  attacks,  hence  the  tribes  set  themselves  very 
generally  against  the  practice. 

Westermarck,1  from  whom  I  have  so  largely  quoted,  gives 
a  list  of  a  good  many  peoples  in  various  parts  of  the  world. 
In  Europe  it  occurred  in  former  days  among  the  Lapps, 
Finns,  and  Esthonians.  The  same  practice  prevailed  among 
the  peoples  of  the  Aryan  race.  "  The  forcible  abduction  of 
a  maiden  from  her  home,  while  she  cries  out  and  weeps, 
after  her  kinsmen  have  been  slain  or  wounded,  and  their 

1  E.  Westermarck,   The  History  of  Human  Marriage,  1891,  p.  384,  et  sea. 


318  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

houses  broken  open,"  was,  according  to  the  laws  of  Manu,1 
one  of  the  eight  legal  forms  of  marriage. 

According  to  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus,  marriage  by- 
capture  was  at  the  time  customary  throughout  ancient 
Greece.  The  ancient  Teutons  frequently  captured  women 
for  wives.  The  Slavs,  in  early  times,  according  to  Nestor, 
practised  marriage  by  capture;  and  in  the  marriage  cere- 
monies of  the  Russians  and  other  Slavonian  nations,  remi- 
niscences of  this  custom  still  survive.  Indeed,  among  the 
South  Slavonians,  capture  de  facto  was  in  full  force  no 
longer  ago  than  the  beginning  of  the  present  century. 
Among  the  Welsh,  on  the  morning  of  the  wedding  day,  the 
bridegroom,  accompanied  by  his  friends  on  horseback,  car- 
ried off  the  bride. 

It  will  probably  be  new  to  many  people  that  there  are 
traces  of  marriage  by  capture  yet  remaining  in  country  dis- 
tricts in  England.  It  was  only  in  the  spring  of  1896 
that  at  a  wedding  in  the  University  Church  at  Cambridge, 
none  of  the  bride's  people  entered  the  church,  and  as  the 
wedding  party  left  the  building  they  were  met  by  the 
bride's  friends,  who  banged  inflated  paper  bags.  The  ab- 
sence of  the  bride's  relations  from  the  church  is  the  remnant 
of  a  fiction  of  enmity  which  is  also  emphasised  by  the  pop- 
ping of  paper  bags.  These  replaced  the  firing  of  guns  of 
an  older  period,  and  these,  again,  replaced  the  weapons  of 
war  which  in  the  dim  past  of  prehistoric  times  were  called 
into  active  requisition. 

We  read  in  the  Folk-lore  Journal : 3 

"  At  Booking,  in  Essex,  the  parents  of  the  bride  keep  studiously 
out  of  the  way  at  the  time  of  the  marriage  ceremony.  I  remem- 
ber the  surprise,  not  to  say  horror,  of  an  old  gardener  who  was 

1  The  Laws  of  Manu,  book  iii.,  vv.  33,  26. 

2  Vol.  ii.,  p.  246. 


COURTING   GAMES  319 

asked  why  he  did  not  attend  his  daughter's  wedding.      '  Such  a 
thing  was  never  heered  of  in  this  here  parish,'  said  he." 

The  next  stage  in  wife-getting  is  the  giving  of  compensa- 
tion to  the  father,  or  the  group,  for  the  loss  of  the  woman's 
services.  This  is  very  widely  distributed  even  at  the  present 
day.  The  earlier  phase  which  we  have  just  considered  may, 
however,  persist  to  a  greater  or  less  extent.  I  found  this 
transition  phase  amongst  my  friends  of  the  Torres  Straits. 
In  all  of  the  islands  a  wife  could  be  obtained  by  an  exchange 
of  girls ;  a  lad  would  give  his  sister  in  exchange  for  a  wife, 
or  an  uncle  might  oblige  a  nephew  and  give  him  a  cousin  to 
exchange.  In  all  other  cases  a  wife  had  to  be  paid  for  ac- 
cording to  arrangement,  but  there  was  usually  a  recognised 
rate  of  exchange.  In  some  islands  there  was  also  a  fight, 
which  I  was  assured  was  "  half-play."  In  some  islands 
also  the  young  man  lived  part  of  the  year  with  his  wife's 
people. 

Westermarck  has  collected  numerous  analogous  cases 
among  the  uncivilised  races  of  America,  Africa,  and  Asia, 
and  the  Indian  Archipelago.  The  custom  of  obtaining  a 
wife  by  services  rendered  to  her  father  has  been  familiarised 
to  us  by  Hebrew  tradition. 

The  most  common  compensation  for  a  wife  is  property 
paid  to  her  owner.  Her  price  varies  indefinitely.  My 
friend  Maino,  the  chief  of  Tud  (Warrior  Island),  told  me  he 
paid  for  his  wife  a  camphor-wood  chest  from  Singapore,  a 
dozen  jerseys,  some  fathoms  of  calico,  a  dozen  fish-hooks, 
a  pound  of  tobacco,  and  he  finished  off  the  enumeration 
with  the  exclamation  of  "  By  golly,  she  too  dear!  " 

There  is  no  need  to  traverse  the  globe  for  examples ;  a 
few  cases  from  nearer  home  will  suffice.  Westermarck  says 
that  in  all  branches  of  the  Semitic  race  men  had  to  buy  or 
serve   for  their  wives,    the  "  Mohar  "   or  M  Mahr  "   being 


320  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

originally  the  same  as  a  purchase  sum.1  In  the  Books  of 
Ruth 2  and  Hosea,3  the  bridegroom  actually  says  he  has 
bought  his  bride;  and  modern  Jews,  according  to  Michaelis, 
have  a  sham  purchase  among  their  marriage  ceremonies, 
which  is  called  "  Marrying  by  the  penny."  4 

Among  the  Finns  marriage  by  purchase  exists  now,  or  did 
so  till  quite  lately.  Among  the  Aryan  nations,  too,  mar- 
riage was  based  on  the  purchase  of  the  wife.  Westermarck 
gives  numerous  examples,  amongst  which  we  may  note  that 
the  ancient  Scandinavians  believed  that  even  the  gods  had 
bought  their  wives.  In  Germany  the  expression,  "  To  pur- 
chase a  wife,"  was  in  use  till  the  end  of  the  Middle  Ages. 
As  late  as  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  English 
preserved  in  their  marriage  ritual  traces  of  this  ancient  legal 
procedure.5 

This  phase  also  is  illustrated  in  the  common  singing  game 
usually  called  "Knights"  or  "Lords  from  Spain."  A 
version 6  from  the  village  of  Bocking,  in  Essex,  runs  as 
follows : — 

"  '  I  am  a  gentleman  come  from  Spain. 
I  've  come  to  court  your  daughter  Jane.' 

"  '  My  daughter  Jane  is  yet  too  young 
To  understand  your  flattering  tongue.' 

"  '  Let  her  be  young  or  let  her  be  old, 
She  must  be  sold  for  Spanish  gold. 

1  W.  Robertson  Smith,  Marriage  and  Kinship  in  Early  Arabia,  1885,  p.  78 
et  seq. 

2  Ruthiv.,  10. 
8  Hosea  iii.,  2. 

4  J.  D.  Michaelis,  Commentaries  on  the  Laws  of  Moses  (Trans.),  1814,  i.,  p. 

451. 

5  E.  Friedberg,  Das  Recht  der  Eheschliessung  in  seiner  qeschichtliche  Ent- 

wicklung,  Leipzig,  1865,  pp.  33,  38. 

6  Folk-lore  Record,  iii.,  p.  171. 


Plate  VI. 


Fig.  i. 


Fig.  2. 
Lords  from  Spain"  ;  from  photographs  by  Miss  Clara  M.  Patterson. 


COURTING   GAMES  32 1 

' '  '  So  fare  thee  well,  my  lady  gay, 
I  '11  call  upon  you  another  day.' 

"  '  Turn  back,  turn  back,  you  saucy  boy, 
And  choose  the  fairest  you  can  spy.' 

"  '  The  fairest  one  that  I  can  see 
Is  pretty  Miss .     Come  to  me!  '  " 

This  game  is  also  played  by  two  alternately  advancing 
and  receding  lines.  At  first  one  line  consists  of  only  a 
single  lord,  who  sings  the  first,  second,  and  third  stanzas. 
After  a  pretended  reluctance  to  come  to  terms,  the  girl  is 
eventually  sold  to  him.  These  then  sing,  "  We  are  two 
lords  from  out  of  Spain,"  according  to  the  local  version, 
and  so  it  goes  on  till  the  lords  have  purchased  the  last  girl. 

The  following  are  the  words  of  this  game  as  played  at 
Ballymiscaw,  County  Down  2  (Plate  VI.): 

"  '  There  was  one  lord  that  came  from  Spain, 
He  came  to  court  my  daughter  Jane. 

"  '  My  daughter  Jane  she  is  too  young 
To  be  controlled  by  a  flattering  tongue.' 

"  '  Will  you  ?  ' 
"  '  No.' 

"  '  Will  you  ?  ' 
"  'Yes.'  " 

The  one  who  answers  "  Yes"  then  joins  hands  with  the 
"  one  lord, "and  they  dance  round,  singing: 

"  You  dirty  wee  scut  you  would  n't  come  out 
To  help  us  with  our  dancing. 

11  There  were  two  lords  that  came  from  Spain,"  etc.,  etc. 

1  Clara  M.  Patterson,  "  A  Few  Children's  Games,"  Proc.  Belfast  Nat.  Field 
Club  (2),  iv.,  1893-94,  p.  49. 


322  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

One  or  two  points  call  for  notice  in  this  version  as  they 
occur  elsewhere,  (i)  the  use  of  the  word  "  controlled  "  for 
11  cajoled  ";  (2)  the  abbreviation  of  the  dialogue,  and,  in 
this  instance,  the  omission  of  the  mercenary  spirit,  and 
finally  the  inelegant  couplet  at  the  finish.  In  a  version 
from  Auchencairn,  Kirkcudbrightshire,  collected  by  my  elder 
daughter,  the  "  lord  "  has  become  a  "  gypsy,"  and  when 
the  mother  tells  the  gypsy  to  "  choose  the  fairest  one  you 
see,"  the  latter  chooses  a  girl  and  asks  her  to  come.  She 
replies  **  No,"  and  turns  right  round  away  from  the  wooer; 
as  she  is  turning  the  gypsy  says : 

"  The  naughty  girl  she  would  not  come  out, 

She  would  not  come  out,  to  help  me  in  my  dancing." 

The  second  time  she  is  asked  she  must  say  "  Yes."     Then 
the  successful  wooer  sings: 

11  Now  we  have  got  the  flower  of  May, 

The  flower  of  May,  to  help  us  in  our  dancing." 

The  two  girls  take  hold  of  each  other's  hands  and  sing: 

"  Here  come  two  gypsies  come  from  Spain,"  etc.,  etc. 

Though  often  dropped  out,  the  buying  element  is  an 
essential  one ;  I  have  an  Irish  variant  which  emphasises  this 
incident. 

"  Let  her  be  young  or  let  her  be  old, 
It  's  for  her  beauty  she  must  be  sold." 

A  French  version,  that  was  presented  before  the  Liver- 
pool Teachers'  Guild  by  Mrs.  J.  G.  Frazer,  marks  a  transi- 
tion to  a  higher  stage  of  culture. 


COURTING  GAMES  323 

LE   CHEVALIER   DU    GUET. 

Tons.  "  '  Qu'est-c'qui  passe  ici  si  tard, 

Compagnons  de  la  Marjolaine  ? 
Qu'est-c'qui  passe  ici  si  tard, 
Gai !  gai  !  dessus  le  quai  ? ' 

Le  Chevalier.  "  '  C'est  le  chevalier  du  guet, 

Compagnons  de  la  Marjolaine, 
C'est  le  chevalier  du  guet, 
Gai  !  gai  !  dessus  le  quai  ! ' 

Tons.  "  '  Que  demand,  le  chevalier, 

Compagnons  de  la  Marjolaine, 
Que  demand,  le  chevalier, 
Gai  !  gai  !  dessus  le  quai  ? ' 

Le  Chevalier.  "  '  Une  fille  a.  marier, 
Compagnons,'  &c. 

Tons.  "  '  N*y  a  pas  de  fille  a  marier, 

Compagnons,'  &c. 

Le  Chevalier.  "  '  On  m'a  dit  qu'  vous  en  aviez, 
Compagnons,'  &c. 

Tons.  "  '  Ceux  qu'  Ton  dit  s'sont  trompes, 

Compagnons,'  &c. 

Le  Chevalier.  "  '  Je  veux  que  vous  m'en  donniez, 
Compagnons,'  &c. 

Tons.  u  '  Sur  les  minuits  revenez, 

Compagnons,'  &c. 

Le  Chevalier.  "  '  Les  minuits  sont  bien  sonnes, 
Compagnons,'  &c. 

Tous.  "  '  Mais  nos  filles  sont  couch^es, 

Compagnons,'  &c. 


324  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Le  Chevalier.  "  '  En  est-il  un'  d'eveillee, 
Compagnons,'  &c. 

Tons.  "  '  Qu'est-ce  que  vous  lui  donnerez, 

Compagnons,'  &c. 

Le  Chevalier.  "  '  De  Tor,  des  bijoux  assez, 
Compagnons,'  etc. 

Tons.  "  '  Elle  n'est  pas  interess£e 

Compagnons,'  &c. 

Le  Chevalier.  "  '  Mon  coeur  je  lui  donnerait, 
Compagnons,'  cSz:c. 

Tons.  "  '  En  ce  cas — la,  choisissez, 

Compagnons  de  la  Marjolaine,'  &c." 

We  have  similar  games  in  our  own  country,  in  which  the 
damsel  will  no  longer  permit  herself  to  be  sold,  and  only 
yields  to  her  wooer  when  he  offers  her  his  heart. 

The  union  of  husband  and  wife  is  indicated  in  various  ways 
by  many  peoples.  In  some  parts  of  India  the  contracting 
parties  tie  themselves  or  are  tied  together.  Among  that 
very  primitive  people,  the  Veddahs  of  Ceylon,  who,  accord- 
ing to  the  Sarasins,  never  tell  a  lie  and  never  steal,  the  bride 
ties  a  thin  cord  of  her  own  twisting  round  the  bridegroom's 
waist,  and  they  are  then  husband  and  wife.  The  man 
always  wears  this  string,  and  nothing  would  induce  him  to 
part  with  it,  for  it  is  emblematic  of  the  marriage  tie,  and, 
"  as  he  never  parts  with  it,  so  he  clings  to  his  wife  through 
life. "  l  In  many  parts  of  India  bride  and  bridegroom  are  for 
the  same  reason  marked  with  one  another's  blood,  and 
Colonel  Dalton  believes  this  to  be  the  origin  of  the  custom 
now  so  common  of  marking  with  red-lead.     The  former  of 

1  J.  Bailey,  "  An  Account  of  the  Wild  Tribes  of  the  Veddahs  of  Ceylon," 
Trans.  Eihnol.  Soc.  (N.S.),  ii.,  1863,  p.  293. 


COURTING   GAMES  325 

these  customs  survives  in  our  wedding-ring,  but  unfortu- 
nately we  have  not  in  the  British  Islands  the  pretty  conti- 
nental custom  of  the  exchange  of  rings,  and  the  wearing  of 
his  ring  by  the  husband.  I  do  not  recall  a  reminiscence  of 
the  blood  custom  in  folk-practice  or  folk-song  in  our  own 
country. 

Among  the  Australian  Narrinyeri  a  woman  is  supposed 
to  signify  her  consent  to  the  marriage  by  carrying  fire  to 
her  husband's  hut  and  making  his  fire  for  him. 

In  Croatia  the  bridegroom  boxes  the  bride's  ears,  in  order 
to  indicate  that  henceforth  he  is  her  master.  And  in 
ancient  Russia,  as  a  part  of  the  marriage  ceremony,  the 
father  took  a  new  whip,  and,  after  striking  his  daughter 
gently  with  it,  told  her  that  he  did  so  for  the  last  time,  and 
then  presented  the  whip  to  the  bridegroom. 

Marriage  ceremonies  arose  by  degrees  and  in  various  ways. 
When  the  mode  of  contracting  a  marriage  altered,  the  earlier 
mode,  from  having  been  a  reality,  survived  as  a  ceremony. 
Thus,  as  we  have  seen,  the  custom  of  capture  was  trans- 
formed into  a  mere  symbol  after  purchase  was  introduced 
as  the  legal  form  of  contracting  a  marriage.  In  other  in- 
stances the  custom  of  purchase  has  survived  as  a  ceremony 
after  it  has  ceased  to  be  a  reality. 

According  as  marriage  was  recognised  as  a  matter  of  some 
importance,  the  entering  into  it  came,  like  many  other 
significant  events  in  human  life,  to  be  celebrated  with  cert- 
ain ceremonies.  Very  commonly  it  is  accompanied  by  a 
wedding  feast. 

The  marriage  ceremony  often  indicates  in  some  way  the 
new  relation  into  which  the  man  and  woman  enter  to  each 
other,  most  frequently  the  living  together,  or  the  wife's 
subjection  to  her  husband.  Among  the  Navajos  the  cere- 
mony merely  consisted  in  eating  maize-pudding  from  the 
same  platter;  and  among  the  Santals  of  India,  says  Colonel 


326  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Dalton,  "  the  social  meal  that  the  boy  and  girl  eat  together 
is  the  most  important  part  of  the  ceremony,  as  by  the  act 
the  girl  ceases  to  belong  to  her  father's  tribe,  and  becomes 
a  member  of  her  husband's  family."  '  Eating  together  is, 
in  the  Malay  Archipelago,  the  chief  and  most  wide-spread 
marriage  ceremony.  The  same  custom  occurs  among  the 
Hovas  of  Madagascar,  the  Hindus,  Esthonians,  and  in 
Ermland,  in  Prussia.2 

In  many  parts  of  the  British  Islands  children  dance  in  a 
ring,  and  sing  to  a  rhyme,  in  which  the  following  very  fre- 
quently occurs : 

"  He  courted  [Aggie  Wilson]  before  he  was  a  man  ; 
He  hugged  her,  he  juggled  her,  he  took  her  on  his  knee, 
Saying,  '  My  dear  [Aggie],  won't  you  marry  me  ? ' 

"  [Aggie]  made  pudding  so  nice  and  so  sweet, 

And  [Willie]  got  his  knife  and  cut  it  round  so  neat, 
Saying,  '  Taste,  love,  taste,  love,  don't  say  nay, 
For  next  Monday  morning  is  our  wedding  day.'  " 8 

Another  Irish  version  runs : 

"  [Annie]  made  a  pudding, 

She  made  it  very  sweet  ; 
She  dare  n't  put  a  knife  in  it 

Till  [George]  came  home  at  neet. 
'  Taste,  [George,]  taste,  and  don't  say  nay ! 
Perhaps  to-morrow  morning  '11  be  our  wedding  day.'  " 

Our  bought  wedding-cake  is  an  unsentimental  survival  of 
this  pretty  custom. 

1  E.  T.  Dalton,  Descriptive  Ethnology  of  Bengal,  Calcutta,  1872,  p.  216. 
5  The  foregoing  remarks  are  abbreviated  from  Westermarck's  History  of 
Human  Marriage,  p.  148. 

1  Proc.  Belfast  Nat.  Field  Club  (2),  iv.,  p.  82. 


COURTING   GAMES  327 

In  this  particular  group  of  singing  games  love-making 
forms  an  important  element ;  we  have  thus  reached  a  higher 
level  of  culture  than  is  exhibited  in  the  previous  games. 

In  these  courting  games  we  often  find  love-lorn  damsels, 
who,  like  poor  Mary,  sit  weeping. 

"  Poor  Mary  sits  a-weeping,  a-weeping,  a-weeping. 
What  is  Mary  weeping  for,  weeping  for,  weeping  for  ? 
She  's  weeping  for  a  husband,  a  husband,  a  husband." 

Or  there  is  the  very  practical  young  lady  on  the  mount- 
ain: 

"  There  stands  a  lady  on  a  mountain, 
Who  she  is  I  do  not  know  ; 
All  she  wants  is  gold  and  silver, 
All  she  wants  is  a  nice  young  man. 

"  Now  she  's  married  I  wish  her  joy, 
First  a  girl  and  then  a  boy  ; 
Seven  years  after  son  and  daughter  : 
Pray,  young  couple,  kiss  together. 

"  Kiss  her  once,  kiss  her  twice, 
Kiss  her  three  times  three." 

The  marriage  formula  of  the  second  verse  is  a  very  com- 
mon one,  subject,  of  course,  to  numerous  variations.  That 
this  enshrines  some  ancient  and  widely  spread  sentiment 
there  can  be  little  doubt. 

Finally,  we  find  a  large  number  of  games  which  are  merely 
excuses  for  kissing,  such  as  "  Kiss  in  the  Ring,"  the 
"  Cushion  Dance,"  and  others,  and  incidentally  kissing 
comes,  not  unnaturally,  into  a  number  of  courting  and  mar- 
riage games.  As  it  happens,  England  has  an  ancient  reput- 
ation for  kissing,  as  the  celebrated  scholar  Erasmus  testified 
to  his  friend,  Faustus  Anderlin,  at  Paris: 


328  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  Your  friend  Erasmus  gets  on  well  in  England.  ...  If 
you  are  a  wise  man  you  will  cross  the  Channel  yourself.  .  . 
To  mention  but  a  single  attraction,  the  English  girls  are  divinely 
pretty.  Soft,  pleasant,  gentle,  and  charming  as  the  Muses.  They 
have  one  custom  which  cannot  be  too  much  admired  (Est prceterea 
mos  nunquam  satis  laudatus).  When  you  go  anywhere  on  a  visit 
the  girls  all  kiss  you.  They  kiss  you  when  you  arrive.  They 
kiss  you  when  you  go  away  ;  and  they  kiss  you  again  when  you 
return.  Go  where  you  will,  it  is  all  kisses  (basiatur  affatim  deni- 
que,  quocunque  te  moveas).  My  dear  Faustus,  if  you  had  once 
tasted  how  soft  and  fragrant  these  lips  were,  you  would  wish  to 
spend  your  life  here." 


>>  i 


1  "  Ex  Anglia,  anno  1499,"  Epist.,  lxv.  (quoted  from  the  Programme  of  Sir 
Ernest  Clarke's  lecture  on  "  May  Day  in  Merrie  England,"  delivered  to  the 
Cambridge  Antiquarian  Society,  March  8,  1897). 


CHAPTER  XV 

FUNERAL  GAMES 

IN  the  summer  of  1896,  I  saw  the  following  game  played  in 
the  village  of  Barrington,  near  Cambridge. 
A  row  of  girls  stand  opposite  to  the  "  mother,"  behind 
whom  hides  the  crouching  "  Jenny  "  (Plate  VIL,  Fig.  1). 
The  row  advance  and  retreat,  singing  the  first  couplet. 

"  I  've  come  to  see  Jenny  Jones,  Jenny  Jones, 
How  does  she  do  ?  " 

The  "  mother"  replies: 

"  She  is  washing,  washing,  washing, 
You  can't  see  her  now." 

The   row   again    advance   and   retreat   (this   they   do  all 
through  the  game) : 

"  '  I  've  come  to  see  Jenny  Jones,  Jenny  Jones, 
How  does  she  do  ? ' 

"  '  She  is  scrubbing,  scrubbing,  scrubbing, 
You  can't  see  her  now.' 

"  '  I  've  come  to  see  Jenny  Jones,  Jenny  Jones, 
How  does  she  do  ? ' 

"'She  is  ill.' 

329 


330  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  '  I  've  come  to  see  Jenny  Jones,  Jenny  Jones, 
How  does  she  do  ?  ' 

"  '  She  's  very  ill.' 

"  •  I  've  come  to  see  Jenny  Jones,  Jenny  Jones, 
How  does  she  do  ? ' 

"  '  She  's  dead.'  " 

The  "  mother  "  says  this  in  a  mournful  voice,  and  at  the 
same  time  "  Jenny  "  lies  on  the  ground  (Plate  VII.,  Fig.  2). 
The  row  again  advance  as  before : 

"  '  Come  in  blue,  blue,  blue, 
Will  that  suit  ? '  " 

The  "  mother  "  replies: 

"  '  Blue  is  for  sailors,  sailors,  sailors, 
That  won't  suit.' 

"  '  Come  in  red,  red,  red, 
Will  that  suit  ? ' 

"  '  Red  is  for  soldiers,  soldiers,  soldiers, 
That  won't  suit.' 

"  '  Come  in  white,  white,  white, 
Will  that  suit  ? ' 

"  '  White  is  for  weddings,  weddings,  weddings, 
That  won't  suit.' 

"  '  Come  in  black,  black,  black, 
Will  that  suit  ? ' 

"  '  Black  is  for  mourning,  mourning,  mourning, 
That  will  suit.'  " 


Plate  VII. 


Fig.  i, 


."#**-*? 


6&S: 


«*";•    : 


•••• 


5jk:^«&.                                                        <V 

Fig.  2. 
"Jenny  Jones  "  ;  from  photographs. 


FUNERAL    GAMES  33 1 

Two  of  the  girls  come  forward,  take  up  "  Jenny,"  and 
convey  her  a  short  distance  off  (Plate  VIII.,  Fig.  i),  the 
"  mother  "  and  other  children  following  crying,  with  hand- 
kerchiefs up  to  their  eyes.  "  Jenny  "  is  then  placed  at  full 
length  on  the  ground  as  if  in  a  grave ;  all  the  children  stand 
round  crying ;  the  girl  who  stands  over  the  grave  picks  up 
a  handful  of  earth  and  sprinkles  it  over  the  dead  "  Jenny  " 
(Plate  VIII.,  Fig.  2),  saying: 

"  Ashes  to  ashes,  dust  to  dust, 
If  God  won't  have  you  the  Devil  must." 

*'  Jenny  Jones  "  then  jumps  up  and  runs  after  the  other 
children,  who  flee  before  her.  The  one  she  catches  is  the 
Jenny  Jones  of  the  next  game. 

At  Auchencairn,  in  Kircudbrightshire,  I  collected  the 
following  version : — 

GEORGINA. 

First  side.  "  '  I  've  come  to  see  Georgina,  Georgina,  Georgina, 
I  've  come  to  see  Georgina,  how  's  she  to-day  ? ' 

Second  side.  '  She  's  up-stairs  washing,  washing,  washing, 

She  's  up-stairs  washing  and  can't  get  away.' 

First  side.      '  Oh  !  very  well,  ladies,  ladies,  ladies, 
We  '11  come  another  day.' 

First  side.  "  '  We  've  come  to  see  Georgina,  Georgina,  Georgina, 
We  've  come  to  see  Georgina,  how  's  she  to-day  ? ' 

Second  side.  '  She  's  up-stairs  ironing,  ironing,  ironing, 

She  's  up-stairs  ironing  and  can't  get  away.' 

First  side.      '  Oh  !  very  well,  ladies,  ladies,  ladies, 
We  '11  come  another  day.' 

r  First  side.  "  'We  've  come  to  see  Georgina,  Georgina,  Georgina, 
We  've  come  to  see  Georgina,  how  's  she  to-day  ? ' 


332  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Second  side.  'She  was  coming  down-stairs  with  a  basin  of 

water 
And  she  fell   down    and  broke   her   toe,    and 
she  's  dead.' 

First  side.  "  '  And  what  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in,  dress 
her  in  ? 
And  what  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in — red  ?  * 
Second  side.  '  Red  for  the  soldiers,  soldiers,  soldiers, 

Red  for  the  soldiers,  and  that  sha'n't  do.' 

First  side.  "  '  What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in  ? 

What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in — blue  ? ' 
Second  side.  '  Blue  for  the  sailors,  sailors,  sailors, 

Blue  for  the  sailors,  and  that  sha'n't  do.' 

First  side.  "  '  What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in  ? 

What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in — black  ? ' 
Second  side.  '  Black  for  the  mourners,  mourners,  mourners, 

Black  for  the  mourners,  and  that  sha'n't  do.' 

First  side.  "  '  What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in  ? 

What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in — white  ? ' 
Second  side.  *  White  for  the  dead  people,  dead  people,  dead 

people, 
White  for  the  dead  people,  and  that  will  do.'  " 

My  friend,  Miss  Patterson,  collected  the  following  version 
at  Holywood,  County  Down.1  Here  "  Jenny  "  sits  upon 
her  "  mother's  "  knee,  and  is  not  hidden  as  in  most  of  the 
versions. 

"  '  I  came  to  see  Jeannie  jo,  Jeannie  jo,  Jeannie  jo, 
I  came  to  see  Jeannie  jo,  is  she  within  ? ' 

1  Clara  M.  Patterson,  "  A  Few  Children's  Games,"  Proc.  Belfast  Nat.  Field 
Club  (2),  iv.,  1893-94,  p.  50. 


Plate  VIII. 


* 


^^t 


Fig.  i. 


Fig.  2. 
Jenny  Jones  "  ;  from  photographs. 


FUNERAL    GAMES  333 

"  '  Jeannie  jo  's  washing  clothes,  washing  clothes,  washing 
clothes, 
Jeannie   jo  's   washing   clothes,    and   ye  can 't  see   her 
to-day.' 

"  '  Oh,  but  I  'm  sorry,  I  'm  sorry, 
Oh,  but  I  'm  sorry  I  can't  see  her  to-day.' 

"  '  Farewell,  ladies,  O  ladies,  0  ladies, 
Farewell,  ladies,  and  gentlemen  too.' " 

Then  the  same  verses  are  repeated  for  "  Starching 
clothes,"  "  Smoothing  clothes,"  and  "  Dead,"  including 
the  two  final  couplets.     The  verses  then  proceed  with : 

"  '  What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in  ? 
What  shall  we  dress  her  in  ?     Shall  it  be  black  ? ' 

"  '  Black  for  the  sweeps,  the  sweeps,  the  sweeps, 
Black  for  the  sweeps,  and  that  shall  not  do.' 

** '  What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in  ? 
What  shall  we  dress  her  in  ?     Shall  it  be  blue  ? ' 

"  '  Blue  for  the  sailors,  sailors,  sailors, 
Blue  for  the  sailors,  and  that  shall  not  do.' 

u  '  What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in  ? 
What  shall  we  dress  her  in  ?     Shall  it  be  red  ?  ' 

"  '  Red  for  the  soldiers,  soldiers,  soldiers, 
Red  for  the  soldiers,  and  that  shall  not  do. ' 

"  l  What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in  ? 
What  shall  we  dress  her  in  ?     Shall  it  be  orange  ? ' 

"  '  Orange  for  the  Orange-men,  Orange-men,  Orange-men, 
Orange  for  the  Orange-men,  and  that  shall  not  do.' 

1  What  shall  we  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in,  dress  her  in  ? 
What  shall  we  dress  her  in  ?     Shall  it  be  white  ? ' 


334  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  '  White  for  the  corpse,  the  corpse,  the  corpse 
White  for  the  corpse,  and  that  will  just  do. 


» »» 


They  then  make  a  funeral  procession,  the  two  biggest 
making  a  seat  with  their  hands  for  "  Jenny  "  and  carrying 
her,  followed  by  the  rest  in  pairs,  singing : 

"  We  have  lost  a  soldier,  soldier,  soldier, 
We  have  lost  a  soldier,  and  the  Queen  has  lost  a  man. 
We  will  bury  him  in  the  bed  of  glory,  glory,  glory, 
We  will  bury  him  in  the  bed   of   glory,   and   we  '11   never 
see  him  any  more." 

These  three  examples  from  England,  Scotland,  and  Ire- 
land must  suffice ;  it  would  have  been  easy  to  print  a  large 
number  of  versions.  There  are  two  chief  ways  in  which  the 
game  is  played,  but  most  of  them  follow  the  procedure  nar- 
rated above,  usually  with  minor  variations.  The  "  mother  " 
usually  holds  out  her  skirts  with  both  hands  so  as  to  hide 
"  Jenny  "  more  completely.  When  "  Jenny  "  is  dead  she 
is  sometimes  covered  up.  The  resuscitation  of  "  Jenny  "  is 
widely  spread.  At  Liphook,  in  Hampshire,  she  is  "  swung 
to  life  again  "  by  two  of  the  players.  In  the  Southampton 
version  she  is  called  "  The  Ghost  " ;  the  children  run  away 
in  affected  terror,  calling  out,  "  The  Ghost!  " 

The  second  form  of  playing  the  game  occurs  in  Shropshire. 
The  players  are  divided  into  two  sides  of  about  equal  num- 
bers, each  side  advancing  and  retiring  in  line  when  singing 
their  parts.  "  Jenny  "  in  some  cases  walks  with  the  girls 
in  her  line  until  the  funeral,  when  she  is  carried  to  the  grave, 
and  in  others  she  stands  alone  behind  the  line. 

The  differences  in  the  words  of  the  various  versions  are 
comparatively  slight.  The  domestic  occupations  of  wash- 
ing, drying,  folding,  starching,  and  ironing  occur  more  or 
less  in  all  the  variants,  except  in  the  most  degraded  forms ; 


FUNERAL   GAMES  335 

brewing  and  baking  are  recorded  only  in  one  case.  The 
sequence  of  "  ill,"  "  very  ill,"  "  dying,"  and  "  dead  "  may 
also  be  abbreviated. 

The  choosing  of  colours  is  an  important  element  alike 
for  the  living  and  the  dead.  In  some  versions  the  mourners 
ask  what  colour  they  are  to  wear  when  they  attend  the 
funeral;  red,  blue,  white,  and  black  are  nearly  always  men- 
tioned, but  interesting  additions  may  be  made.  One  ver- 
sion asks  "  Pink  ?  "  with  the  reply: 

"  Pink  is  for  the  babies,  babies,  babies, 
Pink  is  for  the  babies,  and  that  won't  do." 

In  Irish  versions  we  have  local  colour  added.  In  the 
North,  in  reply  to  the  question,  "  Shall  it  be  orange  ?"  the 
mourners  are  told : 

"  Orange  for  the  Orange-men,"  &c. 

One  version  adds: 

"  Shall  we  come  in  green  ? " 

"  Green  is  for  the  good  people,  good  people,  good  people, 
Green  is  for  the  good  people.     You  can't  come  in  that." 

Calling  the  fairies  "  good  people,"  or  "  wee-folk,"  or 
similar  names,  is  a  common  practice  in  Ireland,  since  these 
little  people  individually  or  collectively  do  not  like  to  be 
called  by  their  own  name.  Of  this  there  are  many  instances 
in  fairy-lore,  but  this  is  by  no  means  confined  to  fairy-folk. 
On  my  first  landing  on  Inishmaan,  the  central  of  the  three 
Aran  Islands  in  Galway  Bay,  I  saw  a  group  of  two  men  and 
two  women  sitting  on  the  beach.  They  allowed  me  to  take 
their  photographs,1  but  when  I  asked  the  women  to  tell  me 
their  names  so  that  I  might  post  prints  to  them,  they  re- 

1  Proc.  Roy.  Irish  Acad.  (3),  ii.,  pi.  xxiii.,  fig.  7. 


336  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

fused.  The  women  never  received  their  photographs,  for  to 
this  day  I  do  not  know  who  they  were.  About  an  hour 
afterwards  I  was  measuring  some  of  the  men  of  the  island, 
and  I  asked  a  young  man  who  was  standing  by  to  let  me 
measure  him,  and  I  asked  him  his  name.  He  would  not 
tell  it,  but  a  bystander  told  it  to  me. 

This  circumstance  reminded  me  that  four  years  before  I 
had  asked  a  precisely  similar  question  of  a  Papuan  in  one  of 
the  islands  of  Torres  Straits,  who  had  exhibited  the  same 
disinclination  to  tell  his  name;  further  illustrations  of  this 
superstition  could  be  multiplied  indefinitely. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  the  folk  credit  the  same  re- 
pugnance to  being  called  by  their  own  names  to  other  living 
things ;  for  example,  a  fisherman  told  me  that  in  Aberdeen 
the  salmon  is  called  "  the  red  fish,"  and  in  Sunderland  the 
pig  is  known  by  fisherfolk  as  "  the  queer  fellow,"  it  bring- 
ing bad  luck  for  them  to  be  called  by  their  proper  designa- 
tions, since  in  the  case  of  the  salmon  the  fish  would  not 
allow  themselves  to  be  caught. 

The  meaning  of  it  is  simple.  It  is  a  very  wide-spread  be- 
lief among  primitive  peoples — indeed  it  is  universal — that 
one  can  gain  power  over  a  person  by  possessing  some  of  his 
hair,  nail-parings,  spittle,  or  whatever  it  may  be.  The  same 
property  extends  to  his  belongings,  and  especially  to  a 
knowledge  of  his  name ;  how  unlikely  would  such  a  person 
be  to  voluntarily  give  his  name  to  a  stranger. 

To  come  back  to  "  Jenny  jo,"  the  final  answer  to  the 
mourners  is  that  they  must  come  in  black,  but  when  the 
question  is  asked  as  to  what  the  dead  maiden  must  be 
dressed  in,  the  reply  is  invariably  white,  in  consonance  with 
the  custom  of  very  ancient  days.  The  dressing  of  the  dead 
body  of  a  maiden  in  white  by  her  girl  companions,  and  the 
carrying  of  the  body  by  them  to  the  grave,  are  common  vil- 
lage customs,  the  whole  village  being  invited  to  the  funeral. 


FUNERAL   GAMES  337 

As  Newell  says : ' 

"  Such  imitations  of  burial  ceremonies  are  not  merely  imagina- 
tive. It  was  once  the  custom  for  the  girls  of  a  village  to  take  an 
active  part  in  the  interment  of  one  of  their  number.  In  a  Flem- 
ish town,  a  generation  since,  when  a  young  girl  died,  her  body 
was  carried  to  the  church,  thence  to  the  cemetery  by  her  former 
companions.  The  religious  ceremony  over,  and  the  coffin  de- 
posited in  the  earth,  all  the  young  girls,  holding  in  one  hand  the 
mortuary  cloth,  returned  to  the  church,  chanting  the  Maiden's 
Dance  with  a  spirit  and  rhythm  scarcely  conceivable  by  one  who 
has  not  heard  it.  The  pall  which  they  carried  to  the  church  was 
of  sky-blue  silk,  having  in  the  middle  a  great  cross  of  white  silk, 
on  which  were  set  three  crowns  of  silver." 

The  following  is  a  rendering  of  the  Maidens  Dance  : 

"  In  heaven  is  a  dance  ; 
Alleluia  ! 
There  dance  all  the  maids  ; 
Benedicamus  Domino — 
Alleluia  ! 

"  It  is  for  Amelia  ; 
Alleluia  ! 
We  dance  like  the  maids  ; 
Benedicamus  Domino — 
Alleluia  ! " 2 

The  common  English  name  of  the  game  is  "  Jenny 
Jones,"  but  it  is  sometimes  called  M  Jenny  jo,"  as  it  is  also 
in  Scotland  and  North-east  Ireland  ;  the  latter  may  safely  be 
regarded  as  the  original  form.  Mrs.  Gomme  says:  "  The 
corruption  of  this  into  '  Jenny  Jones  '  is  exactly  what  might 
be  expected  from  modern  English  ignorance  of  the  pretty 

1  Games  and  Songs  of  American  Children,  1884,   p.  65. 
'  Bernoni,  Cant.  Pop.   Venez.y  xi.,  2,   "  Rosetina." 


338  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

meaning  of  the  word  jo,  '  dear,'  and  to  what  length  this 
corruption  may  proceed  under  such  influences  may  be  seen 
by  such  forms  as  '  Jingy  Jog,'  '  Jilly  Jog,'  and  '  Georg- 
ina.'" 

Mrs.  Gomme  is  inclined  to  believe  that  the  game  that  is 
played  by  two  lines  of  children  is  the  older  version,  and 
suggests  that  this  represents  "  the  wooing  by  a  band  of 
suitors  of  girls  surrounded  by  their  fellow-villagers  " — a 
custom  which  became  obsolete  in  favour  of  ordinary  mar- 
riage custom.  The  dropping  out  of  this  custom  would 
cause  the  game  to  change  from  a  representation  of  both 
wooing  and  burial  to  one  of  burial  only.  As  burial  only, 
the  mother  and  one  line  of  children  is  action  sufficient,  but 
the  presence  of  a  wooing  incident  in  the  earlier  form  of  the 
game  is  plainly  revealed  by  the  verse  which  sings,  "  Fare 
ye  well,  ladies,"  or,  as  it  has  become  in  the  English  variant, 
"  Very  well,  ladies." 

The  English  versions  are  usually  suggestive  of  a  troop  of 
village  maidens  who  call  on  a  companion,  but  they  are  re- 
fused admitfance,  as  the  daily  tasks  have  to  be  performed. 
On  the  death  of  their  little  friend  they  return  to  discuss  the 
important  question  of  how  they  and  the  corpse  are  to  be 
dressed,  and  finally  they  perform  their  allotted  duty  as  pall- 
bearers and  mourners. 

In  some  of  the  Scottish  versions  the  opening  incident  is 
that  of  a  lover  coming  to  court  his  sweetheart.  He  is  re- 
peatedly prevented  from  seeing  her,  owing  to  the  fact  that 
her  mother  keeps  her  close  to  her  every-day  domestic 
duties;  later  the  constant  swain  is  denied  for  a  more  serious 
reason,  and  finally,  instead  of  his  blushing  love,  he  finds  a 
cold  corpse.  This  popular  game  is  in  reality  a  pathetic 
drama. 

There  are  other  funeral  games  among  our  children,  as,  for 
example,  the  widely  spread  "  Green  Gravel." 


FUNERAL    GAMES  339 

Round  Cambridge  the  village  children  join  hands,  form  a 
ring,  and  walk  round,  singing: 

"  Green  gravel,  green  gravel,  your  grass  is  so  green, 
The  fairest  young  damsel  that  ever  was  seen. 

Your  true  love  is  dead, 

He  sends  you  a  letter  to  turn  round  your  head." 

On  mentioning  one  of  the  players  by  her  Christian  and 
surname,  the  girl  turns  right  round,  so  that  she  now  faces 
outwards.  On  the  repetition  of  the  verse  the  girl  next  to 
her  is  mentioned,  and  so  on,  in  regular  order,  until  all  the 
girls  face  outwards,  when  the  game  is  finished. 

An  Irish  version  runs : ' 

"  Green  gravel,  green  gravel,  the  grass  is  so  green, 
The  prettiest  damsel  that  ever  was  seen  ; 
I  washed  her  with  new  milk  and  dressed  her  in  silk, 
And  I  wrote  down  her  name  with  a  brass  pen  and  ink. 

Dear ,  dear ,  your  true  love  is  dead, 

And  I  send  you  a  letter  to  turn  round  your  head." 

A  Belfast  version  has  for  the  middle  lines: 

"  We  washed  her,  we  dried  her,  we  rolled  her  in  silk, 
And  we  wrote  down  her  name  with  a  glass  pen  and  ink." 

As  in  all  the  rhymes  of  these  singing  games,  there  are 
variations  to  the  words,  but  in  this  case  the  variants  are 
usually  of  but  very  minor  importance.  The  writing  of  the 
name  with  a  pen  and  ink  is  doubtless  quite  a  modern  addi- 
tion; it  is  usually  "  a  gold  pen." 

In  some  cases  the  rhyme  is  mixed  up  with  fragments  of 
courting  games.      Mrs.  Gomme  says: 

"  The  additional  ceremony  of  marriage  in  four  of  the  games 
1  Clara  M.  Patterson,  Proc.  Belfast  Nat.  Field  Club,  1893-94,  p.  51. 


340  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

is  clearly  an  interpolation,  which  may  have  arisen  from  the  cus- 
tom of  playing  love  and  marriage  games  at  funerals  and  during 
the  watching  of  the  corpse,  or  may  be  a  mere  transition  to  the 
more  pleasant  task  of  love-making  as  the  basis  of  a  game.  .  .  . 
The  decay  that  has  set  in  is  apparent  by  the  evident  attempt 
to  alter  from  '  green  gravel '  to  '  green  grover '  and  '  yellow 
gravel,'  and  to  introduce  pen  and  black  ink.  The  addition  of 
incongruous  elements  from  other  games  is  a  frequent  occurrence 
in  modern  games,  and  is  the  natural  result  of  decadence  in  the 
original  form  of  the  game.  Altogether  this  game-rhyme  affords 
a  very  good  example  of  the  condition  of  traditional  games  among 
the  present  generation  of  children." 

Those  who  would  like  to  make  acquaintance  with  the  airs 
to  which  the  words  are  sung,  or  who  are  interested  in  the 
various  modifications,  or  who  wish  to  study  Mrs.  Gomme's 
analysis  of  the  game,  are  referred  to  the  original  monograph, 
from  which  I  have  so  freely  borrowed. 

Mrs.  Gomme  points  out  that  green  gravel  and  green  grass 
indicate  the  locality  of  the  scene.  "  Green,"  as  applied  to 
gravel,  probably  means  freshly  disturbed  soil,  just  as  a  green 
grave  means  a  freshly  made  grave.  The  tenant  of  the  new 
grave  is  the  well-loved  lady  of  a  disconsolate  lover. 

The  washing  and  dressing  of  the  corpse,  and  putting  an 
inscription  on  the  place  where  it  is  laid,  are  indicated  by  the 
third  and  fourth  lines.  The  widely  spread  incidents  of 
washing  a  corpse  in  milk  and  dressing  it  in  silk  occur  in  the 
ballad  of  "  Burd  Ellen:"  ' 

"  Tak  up,  tak  up  my  bonny  young  son, 
Gar  wash  him  wi'  the  milk  ; 
Tak  up,  tak  up  my  fair  lady, 
Gar  row  her  in  the  silk." 

The  final  couplet  of  "  Green  Gravel  "  is  a  funeral  dirge,  a 

1  Jamieson,  Ballads,  p.  125. 


FUNERAL    GAMES  34 1 

singing  to  the  dead.     In  some  versions  a  touching  wail  is 
added : 

"  Oh,  mother  !  oh,  mother  !  do  you  think  it  is  true  ? " 

"  Oh,  yes,  child  !  oh,  yes,  child  !  " 
"  Then  what  shall  I  do  ? " 

The  possibility  of  communion  with  the  dead,  which  is  in- 
dicated by  the  line,  "  He  sent  you  a  letter  to  turn  round 
your  head,"  is  not  inconsistent  with  primitive  thought.  To 
these  simple  souls  the  spirits  of  the  dead  are  very  real  beings, 
and  as  Gomme  has  demonstrated  in  his  Ethnology  in  Folk- 
lore, we  have  two  strata  of  belief  in  this  country ;  the  lower, 
pre-Aryan,  belief,  which  is  similar  in  its  general  character 
to  that  which  is  of  almost  universal  occurrence,  is  based  on 
the  idea  that  the  spirits  of  the  dead  are  inimical  to  the 
living.  Associated  with  this  are  numerous  customs,  such  as 
the  curious  practice  in  Scotland  of  turning  upside  down  all 
the  chairs  in  the  room  from  which  the  corpse  has  just  been 
taken ; '  or  in  England  of  unhinging  the  gate  and  placing  it 
across  the  entrance,  and  of  carrying  the  corpse  to  the  grave 
by  a  roundabout  way.2  There  is  also  the  practice  in  Scot- 
land of  keeping  up  a  dance  all  night  after  a  funeral,3  which 
by  the  analogous  practice  among  the  Nagas,  a  non-Aryan 
tribe  of  Southern  India,  must  be  attributed  to  the  desire  to 
get  rid  of  the  spirit  of  the  deceased.4  In  the  west  of  Kerry, 
in  Ireland,  a  broad  line  is  whitewashed  round  the  windows 
and  door  of  a  house  in  which  there  has  been  a  death,  so  that 
the  spirit  may  not  return. 

The  later  stratum  is  the  Aryan  worship  of  deceased  an- 
cestors, and  this  cult  of  the  dead,  based  on  the  love  of  dead 

1  Folk-lore  Record,  ii.,  p.  214. 

2  Frazer,  in  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xv.,  p.  72. 

3  Napier,  Folk-lore  of  West  of  Scotland,  p.  66  ;  Folk-lore  Journal,  in.,  p. 
281  ;  Pococke's  Tour  through  Scotland,  1760,  p.  88. 

4  Owen's  Notes  on  the  ATaga  Tribes,  p.  23. 


342  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

kindred,  is  found  generally  prevalent  over  the  country, 
whereas  the  above-mentioned  cult,  which  is  based  on  the 
fear  of  dead  kindred,  is  found  only  in  isolated  patches  of 
the  country.1  In  the  present  instance  the  relations  between 
the  dead  and  the  living  are  of  a  friendly  nature,  but  in  the 
last  game  we  noticed  that  in  several  versions  the  "  ghost  " 
of  the  deceased  M  Jenny  "  chased  the  frightened  mourners. 

In  confirmation  of  this  being  a  representation  of  an  old 
funeral  ceremony,  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  the  action  of 
turning  backwards  during  the  singing  of  the  dirge  is  also 
represented  in  the  curious  funeral  ceremony  called  "  Dish- 
a-loof,"  which  is  thus  described  by  Henderson:  '*  All  the 
attendants  going  out  of  the  room,  return  into  it  backwards, 
repeating  this  rhyme  of  '  saining.'  "  a 

I  cannot  now  enter  into  a  discussion  of  this  ceremony  and 
the  chant  in  question;  suffice  it  to  say  that  "  Dish-a-loof  " 
is  also  found  in  children's  games. 

In  several  versions  of  these  funeral  games,  love-making  is 
added,  and  it  is  difficult  to  determine  whether  this  is  a  de- 
generate feature  which  has  crept  into  the  game  (for  we 
often  find  a  mixture  taking  place  in  these  games),  or  whether 
it  was  an  original  element  that  has  been  sporadically  retained. 

Festivity  at  a  funeral  may  seem  out  of  place  to  us,  but 
one  must  remember  that  different  men  have  different  man- 
ners, and  what  may  appear  incongruous  to  some  people 
passes  unnoticed  among  others. 

The  mixture  that  appears  in  some  of  the  singing  games  of 
children  of  mourning  and  courting,  of  death  and  marriage,  of 
solemnity  and  frivolity,  is  not  due  to  lack  of  sensibility  on 
the  part  of  the  children ;  it  is  no  sign  of  a  natural  depravity, 
but  it  is  probably  in  many  cases  merely  a  survival.  Children 
must  play  the  old  games  and  repeat  the  old  rhymes,  and 

1  G.  L.  Gomme,  Ethnology  in  Folk-lore,  1892,  p.  125. 
3  Folk-lore  of  the  Northern  Counties,  p.  53. 


FUNERAL   GAMES  343 

they  do  so  as  faithfully  as  they  can.  Conscious  departure 
from  custom  is  often  regarded  as  a  kind  of  moral  delinquency, 
it  is,  in  fact,  a  species  of  sacrilege.  This  conservatism  of 
children  and  of  the  folk  is  the  sheet-anchor  of  folk-lore. 

We  have  only  to  cross  the  Irish  Sea  to  find  that  the  Eng- 
lish children  are  not  singular  in  this  association  of  comedy 
with  tragedy. 

Croker '  says : 

"  The  wake  of  a  corpse  is  a  scene  of  merriment  rather  than  of 
mourning.  ...  In  the  evening  a  general  assembly  of  the  neigh- 
bours takes  place,  when  they  are  entertained  with  whiskey,  to- 
bacco, and  snuff.  On  these  occasions  songs  are  sung  and  stories 
related,  while  the  younger  part  of  the  company  beguile  the  time 
with  various  games  and  sports,  such  as  blind  man's  buff  or  hunt 
the  slipper.  Dancing,  or  rather  running  in  a  ring  round  an  indi- 
vidual, who  performs  various  evolutions,  is  also  a  common  amuse- 
ment ;  and  four  or  five  young  men  will  sometimes,  for  the  diversion 
of  the  party,  blacken  their  faces  and  go  through  a  regular  series  of 
gestures  with  sticks,  not  unlike  those  of  the  English  morris  danc- 
ers. Amongst  the  games  played  at  wakes  are  two  which  I  have 
never  observed  out  of  Ireland,  and  from  their  being  so  universal 
with  the  peasantry,  they  are  probably  of  considerable  antiquity. 
One  of  these  is  called  '  The  Walls  of  Troy,'  and  the  other  i  Short 
Castle.'  " 

The  former  game  is  a  very  old  English  game,  which  is 
generally  known  as  "  Nine  Men's  Morris."  a 

Lady  Wilde  3  gives  a  somewhat  similar  account  of  "  Wake 
Games."  She  refers  to  "  Shuffle  the  Brogue  "  ("  Hunt  the 
Slipper  "),  "  The  Horse  Fair,"  and  "  The  Mock  Marriage." 
Lady  Wilde  says  that  nothing  irreverent  is  meant,  for  it  is 

1  T.  Crofton  Croker,  Researches  in  the  South  of  Ireland,  1824,  p.  170. 

2  A.  B.  Gomme,  Traditional  Games,  p.  414  ;  the  diagram  on  p.  418  is  the 
same  as  that  given  by  Croker  on  p.  171. 

3  Ancient  Cures,  Charms  and  Usages  of  Ireland,  1890,  p.  129. 


344  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

considered  that  whatever  keeps  up  the  spirits  at  a  wake  is 
allowable,  and  harmless  in  the  sight  of  God.  In  towns  the 
fun  often  degenerates  into  licence  and  drinking,  and  many 
games  have  been  therefore  forbidden  by  the  priesthood, 
particularly  the  one  called  "  The  Mock  Marriage,"  which 
often  gave  occasion  for  much  scandal,  and  tumult  and  fight- 
ing amongst  the  young  men ;  whereas,  in  the  country  wake, 
it  would  be  deemed  a  disgrace  for  a  man  to  create  a  disturb- 
ance or  even  to  lose  his  temper,  and  the  women  and  young 
girls  were  treated  with  the  utmost  respect. 

"  Wake  ceremonies  are  still  held  in  the  Irish  cabins,  where  the 
men  drink  and  smoke,  and  tell  ancient  stories,  though  the  highly 
dramatic  games  of  former  times  have  almost  entirely  died  out, 
1  for,'  as  the  peasant  narrator  added,  when  concluding  his  ac- 
count of  the  scenes  he  had  witnessed  in  his  early  youth,  '  there  is 
no  mirth  or  laughter  to  be  heard  any  more  in  the  country,  the 
spirit  has  gone  from  our  people,  and  all  the  old  fun  is  frozen, 
and  the  music  is  dumb  in  poor  Ireland  now.' " 

We  know  that  in  the  prehistoric  times  in  Ireland,  famous 
inter-tribal  games  were  held  near  some  of  the  tumuli  of  de- 
parted heroes  or  kings,  similar  to  the  funeral  games  of 
Patroclus  that  Homer  has  immortalised. 

It  is  a  question  for  future  research  whether  some  of  our 
games  may  not  have  had  this  origin  and  have  subsequently 
been  divorced  from  the  funeral  festival.  If  this  can  be 
shown  to  have  been  the  case,  then  it  is  probable  that  certain 
of  these  games  will  be  found  to  have  had  a  magical  or  a 
symbolic  significance  which  is  at  present  entirely  unsus- 
pected. 

One  version  of  "  Jenny  jo  "  ends  with: 

"  Poor  Jinny  jo  is  dead  and  gone,  dead  and  gone,  dead  and  gone, 
Poor  Jinny  jo  is  dead  and  gone,  all  the  day  long. 


FUNERAL    GAMES  345 

**  We  've  come  to  wake  Jinny  jo,  Jinny  jo,  Jinny  jo, 
We  've  come  to  wake  Jinny  jo,  all  the  day  long. 

"  Jinny  jo  has  candles  round  her  head,"  &C1 

The  wake  and  candles  are  probably  an  Irish  innovation ; 
at  all  events,  an  old  Irish  nurse  remembered  only  the  fol- 
lowing fragment  of  "  Jenny  jo  "  : 

"  Jenny  jo  's  dead  and  gone,  dead  and  gone,  dead  and  gone, 
Jenny  jo  's  dead  and  gone,  all  the  day  long. 
Pipes  and  tobacco  for  Jenny  jo,  Jenny  jo,  Jenny  jo, 
Pipes  and  tobacco  for  Jenny  jo,  all  the  day  long." 

Miss  M.  Hayden,  who  gave  me  this  and  several  other  Irish 
games,  writes :  ' '  The  ' pipes  and  tobacco  '  seem  rather  odd. ' ' 

There  are  two  explanations:  the  obvious  one  is  that  the 
tobacco  is  for  the  wake.  We  have  seen  that  Croker  refers 
to  this  custom,  and  Lady  Wilde  says:  4<  There  is  always  a 
plateful  of  tobacco  and  another  of  snuff  placed  on  a  table 
by  the  side  of  the  corpse,  and  each  man  as  he  enters  is 
expected  to  fill  his  pipe  and  pray  in  silence  for  a  few 
moments."  a 

The  rhyme  says  that  the  pipes  and  tobacco  are  for  "  Jenny 
jo,"  that  is,  for  the  deceased  person.  Last  year  my  friend 
Mr.  R.  Welch,  the  well-known  landscape  photographer  of 
Belfast,  took  some  photographs  of  an  old  graveyard  at  Sal- 
ruck,  Little  Killary,  West  Galway,  on  some  graves  of  which 
were  deposited  a  large  number  of  pipes,  some  quite  new  and 
still  with  the  shavings  with  which  they  were  packed  in  the 
bowl,  others  filled  with  tobacco.  Were  these  offerings  to 
the  spirits  of  the  deceased  ?  An  Irish  journal  indignantly 
denied  that  this  occurred,  and  accused  Mr.  Welch  of  him- 
self putting  the  pipes  there  in  order  to  produce  a  photograph 

1  "The  Wares  of  Autolycus,"  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  Jan.  18,  1897,  p.  10. 
8  Lac.  cit.,  p.  134. 


346  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

that  would  appeal  to  the  English  tourist.  Mr.  Welch, 
however,  was  vindicated,  and  we  may  charitably  assume 
that  the  writer  was  ignorant  that  this  custom  was  fairly 
common  in  Mayo  and  North  Galway.  I  mention  this  cir- 
cumstance, as  facts  which  appear  to  tell  against  the  intelli- 
gence of  a  sensitive  people  may  be  publicly  denied,  though 
they  occur  all  the  same. 

The  distribution  of  tobacco  and  pipes  is  stated  to  be  an 
act  of  hospitality  to  those  who  attend  the  funeral  on  the 
part  of  the  deceased's  relatives,  who  could  not  entertain 
such  a  large  number  in  an  ordinary  way  at  home.  The  idea 
current  among  the  people  who  smoke  the  pipes  in  the  grave- 
yard at  the  funeral  is  that  it  is  unlucky  to  take  them  away. 
Why  unlucky,  if  not  the  survival  of  a  custom  older  than 
pipes  in  Ireland  ? 

The  custom  of  leaving  some  of  the  belongings  of  the  de- 
ceased person,  or  of  placing  offerings,  sometimes  of  food 
only,  at  the  grave,  is  so  widely  spread  among  backward 
peoples  that  it  is  superfluous  to  multiply  examples.  I  will 
give  merely  a  single  instance  that  came  under  my  own  ob- 
servation at  Cape  York  in  North  Queensland.  On  the 
grave  of  a  native  was  the  stretcher  that  had  carried  him  to 
his  last  resting-place,  at  the  head  and  foot  of  the  grave  were 
two  posts,  on  to  the  top  of  the  latter  was  tied  a  handker- 
chief, and  on  to  the  top  of  the  former  a  second  handkerchief 
and  the  pipe  of  the  deceased,  and  close  by  was  his  tin 
"  billy."  It  was  very  pathetic  to  see  the  belongings  of  the 
poor  man  put  by  his  side  ready  for  the  use  of  his  spirit,  or 
perhaps  it  was  the  spirits  of  the  objects  which  were  for  the 
use  of  the  spirit  of  the  man. 

And  now  I  must  close — not  because  I  have  exhausted  the 
subject — indeed,  I  have  touched  on  only  a  few  of  the  prob- 
lems that  the  toys  and  games  of  children  suggest — but  be- 
cause I  have  come  to  an  end  of  my  space.     We  are  now 


FUNERAL    GAMES  347 

discovering  the  fact  that  if  only  we  have  the  understanding, 
we  can  learn  much  of  the  past  history  of  man  from  a  study 
of  our  children.  Two  thousand  years  ago,  as  in  our  own 
days,  might  be  seen  "  children  sitting  in  the  market-places, 
which  call  unto  their  fellows  and  say,  '  We  piped  unto  you, 
and  ye  did  not  dance;  we  wailed,  and  ye  did  not  mourn.'  " 
This  lament  might  well  have  been  made  to  their  elders — 
but  at  last  we  are  beginning  to  heed  their  piping  and  their 
wailing. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

PRACTICAL  SUGGESTIONS  FOR  CONDUCTING 

ETHNOGRAPHICAL  INVESTIGATIONS 

IN  THE  BRITISH  ISLANDS 

AN  influential  committee  was  appointed  by  the  British 
Association  in  1892  to  conduct  an  ethnographical  sur- 
vey of  the  United  Kingdom. 

COPY  OF  FIRST  CIRCULAR 
"  Sir, — The  above-named  Committee,  in  pursuance  of  the  ob- 
ject for  which  they  have  been  delegated  by  the  Society  of  Anti- 
quaries of  London,  the  Folk-lore  Society,  the  Dialect  Society, 
and  the  Anthropological  Institute,  and  appointed  by  the  British 
Association,  propose  to  record  for  certain  typical  villages  and  the 
neighbouring  districts  : 

"  (1)  Physical  types  of  the  inhabitants. 

(2)  Current  traditions  and  beliefs. 

(3)  Peculiarities  of  dialect. 

(4)  Monuments  and  other  remains  of  ancient  culture  ;  and 

(5)  Historical  evidence  as  to  the  continuity  of  race. 

"  As  a  first  step  the  Committee  desire  to  form  a  list  of  such 
villages  in  the  United  Kingdom  as  appear  especially  to  deserve 
ethnographic  study,  out  of  which  a  selection  might  afterwards  be 
made  for  the  survey.  The  villages  or  districts  suitable  for  entry 
on  the  list  are  such  as  contain  not  less  than  a  hundred  adults,  the 
large  majority  of  whose  forefathers  have  lived  there  as  far  back 
as  can  be  traced,  and  of  whom  the  desired  physical  measure- 
ments, with  photographs,  might  be  obtained. 

348 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  349 

"  It  is  believed  by  the  Committee  that  such  villages  may  exist 
in  the  districts  with  which  you  are  acquainted,  and  as  you  are 
eminently  capable  of  affording  help  in  this  preliminary  search, 
we  have  to  request  that  you  will  do  so  by  kindly  furnishing  the 
names  of  any  that  may  occur  to  you,  with  a  brief  account  of 
their  several  characteristics,  mentioning  at  the  same  time  the  ad- 
dresses of  such  of  their  residents  as  would  be  likely  to  support 
the  Committee  in  pursuing  their  inquiry. 

"  They  would  also  be  glad  to  be  favoured  with  the  names  of 
any  persons  known  to  you  in  other  districts  to  whom  this  circular 
letter  might  with  propriety  be  addressed." 

In  January,  1894,  another  circular  was  issued  from  which 
the  following  is  extracted  : 

"  They  are  sure  you  will  excuse  their  urging  what  may  at  first 
sight  appear  to  be  trivial  details,  but  which  are  in  reality  of  great 
practical  importance  to  those  who  have  to  arrange  and  consult  a 
large  collection  of  communications  from  different  persons.  These 
are,  that  the  communications  should  all  be  written  on  foolscap 
paper,  and  that  the  writing  should  be  on  one  side  only  of  the 
page,  and  should  never  run  so  near  the  margin  as  to  be  an  ob- 
stacle to  future  binding. 

"  The  Committee  are  satisfied  that  the  value  of  the  returns  will 
be  much  reduced  if  they  do  not  give  information  under  all  the 
several  heads.  If  it  should  happen,  therefore,  that  your  own 
pursuits  or  means  of  information  do  not  enable  you  to  fill  up  the 
whole  of  the  forms  desired,  they  would  take  it  as  a  particular 
favour  if  you  could  induce  friends  to  supply  the  missing  details, 
and  thus  to  render  the  information  complete. 

"  The  Committee,  in  addressing  you  individually,  wish  to  dis- 
claim any  idea  of  interfering  with  the  action  of  local  societies, 
from  many  of  which,  on  the  contrary,  they  have  reason  to  expect 
very  valuable  assistance.  If  it  should  suit  your  convenience  to 
present  to  your  local  society  an  even  fuller  account  of  your  ob- 
servations  than   may  be   necessary  to  comply  with  the  require- 


350  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

ments  of  this  Committee,  such  a  course  would  be  highly  desir- 
able, and  it  is  hoped  that  the  local  societies  will,  on  the  other 
hand,  give  to  the  observers  in  their  several  districts  all  the  en- 
couragement and  moral  assistance  that  may  be  found  practicable. 
"  All  communications  should  be  addressed  to  '  The  Secretary 
of  the  Ethnographic  Survey,  British  Association,  Burlington 
House,  London,  W.'  " 

The  work  done  by  this  committee  will  be  found  in  the 
reports  of  the  Association,  but  as  yet  no  systematic  survey 
of  the  British  Islands  has  been  attempted.  The  ethno- 
graphical survey  of  Ireland  has  been  undertaken  by  a 
Dublin  committee,  which  is  supported  by  the  Royal  Irish 
Academy,  and  four  comprehensive  reports  l  have  been  pub- 
lished by  that  body.  These  reports  are  drawn  up  on  the 
following  lines: 

I.  Physiography  of  the  district  investigated.  II.  Anthropo- 
graphy. — I.  Methods;  2.  Physical  characters  with  lists  of 
measurements;  3.  Vital  statistics  (general  and  economic), 
(a)  Population,  (b)  Acreage  and  Rental,  (c)  Language  and 
Education,  (d)  Health;    4.   Psychology;     5.   Folk  Names. 

III.  Sociology. — 1.  Occupations;  2.  Family  Life  and  Cus- 
toms; 3.   Food;   4.   Clothing;  5.   Dwellings;  6.   Transport. 

IV.  Folk-lore. — 1.  Customs  and  Beliefs;  2.  Legends  and 
Traditions;  3.  Leechcraft.  V.  Archceology. — I.  Survivals; 
2.  Antiquities.  VI.  History.  VII.  Ethnology.  VIII. 
Bibliography. 

1  "  The  Ethnography  of  the  Aran  Islands,  County  Galway."  by  Prof.  A.  C. 
Haddon  and  Dr.  C.  R.  Browne,  Proc.  Roy.  Irish  Acad.  (3rd  ser.),  ii.,  1893, 
pp.  768-830,  pis.  xxii.-xxiv.  ;  "The  Ethnography  of  Inishbofin  and  Inish- 
shark,  County  Galway,"  by  Dr.  C.  R.  Browne,  loc.  cit.,  iii.,  1894,  pp.  3*7-370, 
pis.  viii. ,  ix.  ;  "  The  Ethnography  of  the  Mullet,  Inishkea  Islands  and  Porta- 
cloy,  County  Mayo,"  by  Dr.  C.  R.  Browne,  loc.  cit.,  iii.,  1895,  pp.  587-649, 
pis.  xv.-xvii.  ;  "  The  Ethnography  of  Ballycroy,  County  Mayo,"  by  Dr.  C.  R. 
Browne,  loc  cit.,  iv.,  1897,  pp.  74-m,  pis.  iii.,  iv.  ;  "The  Ethnography  of 
Clare  Island  and  Inishturk,  County  Mayo,"  by  C.  R.  Browne,  loc.  cit.,  iv.,  1898. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  35  I 

It  will  be  evident  that  this  is  a  somewhat  ambitious  pro- 
gramme, and  although  in  many  instances  the  information 
given  on  a  particular  subject  is  meagre,  owing  to  the  very 
limited  time  available  for  work  in  the  field,  it  was  considered 
best  to  keep  to  the  general  scheme  in  order  to  emphasise 
the  fact  that  in  all  investigations  of  this  kind  the  widest 
possible  outlook  must  be  maintained. 

I. — INSTRUCTIONS  FOR  MAKING  CERTAIN  SOMATOLOGICAL 
OBSERVATIONS 

I .  Hair  and  Eye  Colours 

I  have  already  (pp.  23-26)  given  an  account  of  Dr.  Bed- 
doe's  methods  of  recording  the  colours  of  the  hair  and  eyes; 
it  only  remains  to  add  a  few  practical  hints  which  I  also  cull 
from  The  Races  of  Britain  (p.  4): 

"  When  unable  to  decide  in  which  of  two  columns  (e.  g.t  b  or  d) 
an  individual  ought  to  be  inscribed,  I  divide  him  between  the  two, 
by  a  Solomonian  judgment,  and  set  down -J,  or  .5,  in  each  of  them. 

"  When  engaged  in  this  work,  I  set  down  in  his  proper  place 
on  my  card  of  observation  every  person  (with  the  exceptions  to 
be  mentioned  presently)  whom  I  meet,  or  who  passes  me  within 
a  short  distance,  say  from  one  to  three  yards.  As  a  rule  I  take 
no  note  of  persons  who  apparently  belong  to  the  upper  classes, 
as  these  are  more  migratory  and  more  often  mixed  in  blood.  I 
neglect  those  whom  I  suppose  to  be  under  age — fixing  the  point 
roughly  at  eighteen  or  twenty  for  men,  seventeen  or  eighteen  for 
women — as  well  as  all  those  whose  hair  has  begun  to  grizzle. 
Thus  I  get  a  fairly  uniform  material  to  work  upon,  though  doubt- 
less the  hair  of  most  people  does  darken  considerably  between 
twenty  and  forty  or  fifty.  In  order  to  preserve  perfect  fairness, 
I  always  examine  first,  out  of  any  group  of  persons,  the  one  who 
is  nearest,  rather  than  the  one  to  whom  my  attention  is  most 
drawn.     Certain  colours  of  the  hair,  such  as  red,  certain  shades 


352  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

of  the  eye,  such  as  light  grey,  can  be  discerned  at  a  very  con- 
siderable distance;  but  I  take  no  note  of  anyone  who  does  not 
approach  me  so  nearly  that  I  can  recognise  the  more  obscure 
colours.  Much  allowance  needs  to  be  made  for  the  varying 
effects  of  light.  Direct  sunlight  is  better  avoided  when  possible; 
I  always  choose  the  shady  side  of  a  street  on  a  sunny  day.  Con- 
siderable difficulties  are  created  by  the  freaks  of  fashion.  I  once 
visited  Friesland,  in  order  to  study  the  physical  type  of  that 
region.  Conceive  my  disappointment  when  I  found  myself  sur- 
rounded by  comely  damsels  and  buxom  matrons,  not  one  of 
whom  suffered  a  single  yellow  hair  to  stray  beyond  her  lace  cap 
or  silver-gilt  head-plate.  When  I  began  to  work  in  England  dark 
hair  was  in  fashion  among  women ;  and  light  and  reddish  hues 
were  dulled  with  greasy  unguents.  In  later  years  fair  hair  has 
been  more  in  vogue;  and  golden  shades,  sometimes  unknown  to 
nature,  are  produced  by  art.  Among  men,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  close  cropping  of  the  head,  borrowed  from  the  French,  makes 
comparisons  difficult.  Fortunately,  most  vagaries  of  this  kind 
are  little  prevalent  in  the  classes  among  whom  I  seek  my  material. 
"  It  may  be  objected  that  there  is  no  security  that  many  of  the 
persons  observed  may  not  be  aliens  to  the  place  or  neighbour- 
hood wherein  they  are  encountered.  Certainly;  there  is  no  such 
security.  But  if  a  sufficient  number  of  observations  be  secured, 
and  the  upper  and  other  notoriously  migratory  classes  (who  are 
mostly  easy  of  recognition)  be  excluded,  the  probability  is  im- 
mense that  the  great  majority  of  the  remainder  have  been  born 
within  a  moderate  radius  of  the  centre  of  observation;  and  the 
majority  will  determine  the  position  of  the  community  in  my 
chromatic  scale." 

Personally  I  am  rather  inclined  to  think  it  would  be  a 
good  plan,  when  marking  the  "  niger  "  column,  to  make  a 
slightly  different  mark  for  those  cases  in  which  the  hair  is 
known  to  be  absolutely  black,  i.  e.,  when  it  shows  black 
under  all  conditions  of  light  and  when  quite  dry. 

Many    opportunities    present    themselves    for    collecting 


E  THNOGRA  PHICA  L   IN  VES  TIG  A  TIONS 


353 


these  statistics,  such  as  market-days,  village  flower-shows, 
local  festivals  and  sports,  the  "  Hinds'  hirings  "  of  North- 
umberland, i.  e.,  those  days  when  the  farm  labourers  of  both 
sexes  come  into  the  towns  to  hire  out  themselves  for  the 
following  year.  When  groups  are  being  photographed,  or 
individuals  measured,  a  small  crowd  generally  collects,  and 
one  of  the  party  can  be  told  off  to  unobtrusively  make 
notes  of  the  colours  of  the  eyes  and  hair  of  onlookers. 

The  markings  on  the  cards  should  always  consist  of  short, 
firm  strokes  (dots  are  less  satisfactory) ;  it  is  best  never  to 
put  numbers.  Each  group  of  cards  should  be  kept  in 
labelled  envelopes.  A  little  method  and  system  is  a  great 
saving  of  time  in  the  end,  and  the  results  are  more  likely 
to  be  trustworthy  if  system  is  made  into  habit. 

ADULTS.— MALES.1 


EYES. 

TOTALS. 

PERCENTAGE 

Light. 

Medium. 

Dark. 

OF 
HAIR  COLOURS. 

Red 

4 

8 
8o 

27 

I 

3 
6 

1 

2  . 
I 

5 
8 

85 

34 

2 

3-73 

5-97 

63.43 

25.37 

1.50 

Fair 

Brown 

Dark 

Black 

Totals 

119 

11 

4 

134 

100.00 

Percentage  of  eye  colours  .  . 

88.80 

8.21 

2-99 

100.00 

Index  of  Nigrescence,  18.57. 

The  above  table   is   an   example  of  one  way    in  which 
the  results  can  be  tabulated ;  a  similar  table  should  be  made 

1  A.  C.  Haddon  and  C.  R.  Browne,  "  The  Ethnography  of  the  Aran  Islands, 
County  Galway,"  Proceedings  Royal  Irish  Academy  (3),  ii.,  1893,  p.  783. 
23 


354  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

for  Females,  Boys,  and  Girls.     These  can  be  combined  in 
various  ways  afterwards. 

It  is  occasionally  a  matter  of  local  belief — or  it  may  come 
out  in  the  observations — that  the  inhabitants  of  one  village, 
or  of  an  island,  are  lighter  or  darker,  as  the  case  may  be,  or 
vary  in  some  other  way  from  the  neighbouring  locality. 
All  such  supposed  or  real  variations  should  be  worked  out 
on  special  tables.  It  is  well  not  to  use  the  recording  cards 
for  more  than  one  occasion  or  for  more  than  one  village. 

2.   Anthropometry  for  British  Ethnography. 

I  have  kept  the  instructions  for  collecting  the  hair  and  eye 
colours  distinct  from  the  other  ethnographical  data,  as  these 
can  so  readily  be  made  anywhere  by  anybody,  whereas  the 
following  data,  for  the  most  part,  require  the  employment 
of  instruments  and  a  little  preparatory  training. 

The  schedule  on  pp.  356,  357  is  that  drawn  up  by  the 
Ethnographical  Survey  Committee  of  the  British  Associa- 
tion. Copies  of  this,  for  field  observation,  can  be  obtained 
from  the  Secretary  of  the  Committee,  E.  S.  Hartland,  Esq., 
Highgarth,  Gloucester. 

Directions  for  Measurement. 

"  Instrument  Required  for  these  Measurements. — The  '  Travel- 
ler's Anthropometer,'  manufactured  by  Aston  &  Mander,  61  Old 
Compton  Street,  London,  W.C. ;  price,  jQ$  3s.  complete;  without 
2-metre  steel  measuring-tape  and  box  footpiece,  £2  \os.  With 
this  instrument  all  the  measurements  can  be  taken.  In  a  per- 
manent laboratory  it  will  be  found  convenient  to  have  a  fixed 
graduated  standard  for  measuring  the  height,  or  a  scale  affixed 
to  a  wall.  For  field  work  a  tape  measure  may  be  temporarily 
suspended  to  a  rigid  vertical  support,  with  the  zero  just  touching 
the  ground  or  floor.  A  2-metre  tape,  a  pair  of  folding  calli- 
pers, a  folding  square,  all  of  which  are  graduated  in  millimetres, 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  355 

and  a  small  set-square  can  be  obtained  from  Aston  &  Mander  for 
£1  6s. ;  with  this  small  equipment  all  the  necessary  measurements 
can  be  taken. 

"Height  Standing. — The  subject  should  stand  perfectly  up- 
right, with  his  back  to  the  standard  or  fixed  tape,  and  his  eyes 
directed  horizontally  forwards.  Care  should  be  taken  that  the 
standard  or  support  for  the  tape  is  vertical.  The  stature  may  be 
measured  by  placing  the  person  with  his  back  against  a  wall  to 
which  a  metre  scale  has  been  affixed.  The  height  is  determined 
by  placing  a  carpenter's  square  or  a  large  set-square  against  the 
support  in  such  a  manner  that  the  lower  edge  is  at  right  angles  to 
the  scale;  the  square  should  be  placed  well  above  the  head,  and 
then  brought  down  till  its  lower  edge  feels  the  resistance  of  the 
top  of  the  head.  The  observer  should  be  careful  that  the  height 
is  taken  in  the  middle  line  of  the  head.  If  the  subject  should 
object  to  take  off  his  boots,  measure  the  thickness  of  the  boot- 
heel,  and  deduct  it  from  stature  indicated  in  boots. 

"  Height  Sitting. — For  this  the  subject  should  be  seated  on  a 
low  stool  or  bench,  having  behind  it  a  graduated  rod  or  tape 
with  its  zero  level  with  the  seat;  he  should  sit  perfectly  erect, 
with  his  back  well  in  against  the  scale.  Then  proceed  as  in 
measuring  the  height  standing.  The  square  should  be  employed 
here  also  if  the  tape  against  a  wall  is  used. 

"  Letigth  of  Cranium. — Measured  with  callipers  from  the  most 
prominent  part  of  the  projection  between  the  eyebrows  (glabella) 
to  the  most  distant  point  at  the  back  of  the  head  in  the  midd/e 
line.  Care  should  be  taken  to  keep  the  end  of  the  callipers 
steady  on  the  glabella  by  holding  it  there  with  the  fingers,  while 
the  other  extremity  is  searching  for  the  maximum  projection  of 
the  head  behind. 

"  Breadth  of  Cranium. — The  maximum  breadth  of  head,  which 
is  usually  about  the  level  of  the  top  of  the  ears,  is  measured  at 
right  angles  to  the  length.  Care  must  be  taken  to  hold  the  in- 
strument so  that  both  its  points  are  exactly  on  the  same  horizon- 
tal level. 

"  Face  Length. — This  is  measured  from  the  slight  furrow  which 


356 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


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358  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

marks  the  root  of  the  nose,  and  which  is  about  the  level  of  a  line 
drawn  from  the  centre  of  the  pupil  of  one  eye  to  that  of  the  other, 
to  the  under  part  of  the  chin.  Should  there  be  two  furrows,  as 
is  often  the  case,  measure  from  between  them.1 

11  Upper  Face  Length. — From  root  of  nose  to  the  interval  be- 
tween the  two  central  front  teeth  at  their  roots. 

"  Face  Breadth. — Maximum  breadth  of  face  between  the  bony 
projections  in  front  of  the  ears. 

"  Interocular  Breadth. — Width  between  the  internal  angles  of 
the  eyes.  While  this  is  being  measured  the  subject  should  shut 
his  eyes. 

"  Bigonial  Breadth. — Breadth  of  face  at  the  outer  surface  of 
the  angles  of  the  lower  jaw  below  the  ears. 

"  Nose  Length. — From  the  furrow  at  root  of  nose  to  the  angle 
between  the  nose  and  the  upper  lip  in  the  middle  line.1 

"  Breadth  of  Nose. — Measured  horizontally  across  the  nostrils 
at  the  widest  part,  but  without  compressing  the  nostrils. 

"  Height  of  Head. — The  head  should  be  so  held  that  the  eyes 
look  straight  forward  to  a  point  at  the  same  level  as  themselves, 
/.  e.,  the  plane  of  vision  should  be  exactly  horizontal.  The  rod 
of  the  anthropometer  should  be  held  vertically  in  front  of  the  face 
of  the  subject,  and  the  upper  straight  arm  should  be  extended  as 
far  as  possible  arid  placed  along  the  middle  line  of  the  head;  the 
shorter  lower  arm  should  be  pushed  up  to  the  lower  surface  of 
the  chin.  When  measured  with  the  square  the  depending  bar 
must  be  held  vertically  in  front  of  the  face  (with  the  assistance  of 
the  spirit-level  or  plumb-line),  and  the  small  set-square  passed  up 
this  arm  from  below  in  such  a  manner  that  its  horizontal  upper 
edge  will  come  into  contact  with  the  lower  contour  of  the  chin. 
The  distance  between  the  lower  edge  of  the  horizontal  bar  of  the 
square  and  the  upper  edge  of  the  set-square  can  be  read  off,  and 
this  will  be  the  maximum  height  of  the  head. 

"  Height  of  Cranium. — The  head  being  held  in  precisely  the 
same  manner  as  in  measuring  the  height  of  the  head,  the  instru- 
ment is  rotated  to  the  left  side  of  the  head,  its  upper  bar  still 
1  See  special  instructions  for  taking  nasal  measurements,  pp.  366-368. 


ETHXOGRAPHICAL   IXVESTIGATIOXS  359 

resting  on  the  crown,  and  the  recording  arm  (or  the  set-square) 
is  pointed  to  the  centre  of  the  line  of  attachment  of  the  small 
projecting  cartilage  in  front  of  the  ear-hole." 

Note. — It  is  essential  that  these  rules  should  be  strictly  followed 
in  order  to  secure  accuracy.  All  measurements  must  be  made  in 
millimetres.  If  possible,  the  subject's  weight  should  be  obtained, 
and  recorded  in  the  place  set  apart  for  remarks.  The  observer 
is  recommended  to  procure  Notes  and  Queries  on  Anthropology,  2d 
edition,  from  the  Anthropological  Institute,  3  Hanover  Square, 
London,  W.     Net  price,  y.  6d. 

I  have  printed  the  schedule  verbatim,  with  the  exception  of 
the  addition  of  the  line  relating  to  the  length  of  time  the  sub- 
ject's mother's  people  have  resided  in  that  particular  district. 

The  vagueness  of  the  question,  "  What  district  do  your 
father's  (or  mother's)  people  come  from  ? "  is  better  for  our 
purpose  than  any  more  precise  question  would  be,  as  it  gives 
us  just  the  information  we  require.  For  example,  if  with 
specious  exactitude  we  asked  a  subject  where  he  was  born, 
and  he  replied  "  Cambridge,"  then  where  his  parents  were 
born,  it  might  be  "Cambridge"  for  both;  whereas  his 
grandparents,  on  both  sides,  might  have  been  North- 
country  folk,  and  their  forbears  for  many  generations  back. 
Now  mere  residence  in  Cambridge  for  two  generations  would 
not  alter  a  Northumberland  and  Durham  ancestry,  provided, 
as  we  assume  in  this  case,  that  no  local  intermixture  had 
taken  place.  People  usually  know,  in  a  general  sort  of  way, 
where  their  "  people  "  lived  some  generations  ago,  and  our 
apparently  vague  question  gets  directly  at  this  information. 

The  "  surname  of  your  father  "  is  generally  a  superfluous 
question,  but  owing  to  some  local  peculiarities  of  naming 
people  it  is  as  well  to  retain  it. 

The  schedule  is  printed  on  paper  of  foolscap  size,  with 
the   observations    on    one  side  and   the   directions   on   the 


360  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

other.  These  are  cumbersome  in  the  field,  and  as  field 
work  should  be  undertaken  only  by  those  who  have  already 
had  some  experience,  or,  at  all  events,  by  those  who  have 
mastered  the  technique,  there  is  no  need  to  issue  the  instruc- 
tions on  each  sheet.  I  would  therefore  suggest  that  cards 
be  employed  about  six  inches  in  length  and  four  inches  in 
breadth,  which  might  be  printed  as  on  opposite  page. 

Similar  schedules  to  these,  but  with  the  addition  of  some 
physical  tests  and  with  some  minor  alterations,  are  in  use  in 
the  Anthropological  Laboratory  of  the  Cambridge  Philo- 
sophical Society,  and  in  that  of  Trinity  College,  Dublin. 

In  Cambridge,  the  head  height  from  the  level  of  the  ear- 
hole  is  alone  taken ;  for  field  work  it  is  advisable,  if  possible, 
to  take  the  total  height  of  the  head  as  detailed  in  the 
schedule. 

Head  Measurements. — The  height  of  the  cranium  is  the 
same  as  the  altitudinal  auricular  radius  of  the  card  used  in 
Ireland.  The  schedule  explains  how  this  may  be  obtained 
by  projection,  as  it  is  termed :  but  in  Ireland  we  use  a 
modification  of  Busk's  craniometer  that  was  introduced  by 
Professor  Cunningham,1  by  means  of  which  we  take  the 
radii  from  the  level  of  the  ear-holes  to  the  greatest  vertical 
height  of  the  head,  to  the  nasion,  and  to  the  insertion  of 
the  upper  front  teeth  in  the  gums  (alveolus).  This  instru- 
ment is  very  convenient  to  use,  and  gives  accurate  measure- 
ments ;  it  is  made  so  as  to  take  to  pieces,  and  is  therefore 
quite  portable.  A  further  advantage  is  that  analogous 
measurements  can  be  made  on  skulls;  the  disadvantage  is 
the  dislike  some  people  have  to  anything  being  inserted  in 
their  ears.  An  extended  experience  in  Ireland  shows  that 
very  few  refuse  pointblank  to  the  instrument  being  used, 
and  most  make  no  objection  whatever. 

1  C.  R.  Browne,  "Some  New  Anthropometrical  Instruments,"  Proc.  Roy. 
Irish  Acad.  (3),  ii.,  1892,  p.  397. 


£  THNO  GRA  PHICA  L  IN  VE  S  TIG  A  TIONS 


361 


Dite 

Locality 

County 

■1 

Occupation 

Age 

■ 

What  district  do  your   father's 
people  come  from  ? 1 

What  district  do  your  mother's 
people  come  from  ? 

Skin— Pale,  Ruddy,  Dark  ;  Freckled 

tt  •    j  Red,  Fair,  Brown,  Dark,  Jet  Black, 
nair  1      Straight,  Wavy,  Curly 

T-        J  Blue,  Grey  ;  Green,  Hazel ;  Brown  1 
tyes  1      Light;            Medium;        Dark    \" 

p.         (  Long,  Narrow  ;  Medium  ;  Short,  Broac 
ta.ce  -j  cheek-bones— (1)  inconspicuous,  (2)  p 

1 

rominent.  .. 

•r>         i  A,  flat  ;  B,  outstanding 

s  |  Lobes— (1)  absent,  (2)  present 

Nose — Length.. 

Breadth  .  . 

Profile.... 

Head— Length  . 

1  Breadth  .  . 

Height.... 

Face. 


Length. 


Upper  Face 
Length 


Breadth. 


Interocular 
Breadth. 


Bigonial 
Breadth. 


Auricular  radii.    Altitudinal 

Nasal  .  . 

Alveolar.  . 

Height     {. 
Standing   ) 

Height  | 
Sitting  f 

Weight 

Hand 

Forearm 

1 

Span 

Total  Facial  Index 

Length— Height  Index... 

Upper  Facial  Index 

Nasal 

362  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

There  is  no  need  for  me  to  say  more  about  the  cephalic 
index  or  the  method  of  obtaining  it ;  but  it  is  desirable  that 
the  question  should  be  determined  of  the  ratio  of  the 
cephalic  index  (that  is,  the  index  of  the  living  head)  to  the 
cranial  index  (or  the  index  of  the  skull).  This  matter 
has  received  the  attention  of  many  anthropologists,  and  has 
recently  been  discussed  by  Dr.  W.  Z.  Ripley.1  Most  an- 
thropologists follow  Broca,  and  add  two  units  to  the  cranial 
index  to  obtain  the  cephalic  index;  thus  a  skull  having  a 
length-breadth  index  of  78  would  correspond  to  a  cephalic 
index  of  80  in  the  living  subject.  Tappeiner,  in  the  Tyrol, 
finds  differences  from  1  to  5  units;  Mantegazza  allows  3 
units;  Zampa  allows  2.5  units;  Boas  allows  1.4  for  Ameri- 
can Indians;  Livi  allows  1.3  for  Italians;  Mies  allows  1. 1 1 
for  men  and  .85  for  women,  with  a  tendency  to  increase 
among  brachycephals;  Topinard  allows  ^  of  a  unit;  Weis- 
bach  and  Zuckerhandl  allow  only  -^  of  a  unit;  whereas 
Virchow  says  no  correction  is  needed,  as  the  two  are  practi- 
cally equal.  Ripley  believes  that  the  difference  is  nearer  1.5 
than  2  units.2 

The  German  system  of  craniometry,  taken  as  it  is  from 
an  artificial  base,  does  not  correspond  to  the  maximum 
length  as  taken  directly  by  French,  English,  and  American 
anthropologists,  and  so  tends  to  increase  the  length-breadth 
index  (by  diminishing  the  length)  as  compared  with  the 
French. 

To  reduce  the  German  ratio  to  that  of  the  French,  one 
unit  must  be  added  to  the  German  cranial  indices  (as,  for 
example,  in  the  measurements  of  Frisian  crania  made  by 
Virchow  and  by  Broca).  If  two  units  be  added  to  the  French 
cranial  index  to  obtain  the  cephalic  index,  only  one  unit 

1  William  Z.  Ripley,  "  Notes  et  Documents  pour  la  Construction  d'une  Carte 
de  l'lndice  Cephalique  en  Europe,"  L'Anihropologie,  vii.,  1896,  p.  513. 
8  Loc.  cit.,  p.  519. 


£  THNO GRA PHICA L   IN VESTIGA  TIONS 

must  be  added  to  the  German  cranial  index  to  make  it  cor- 
respond with  the  French  cephalic  index;  but  owing  to  his 
special  methods  Welcker's  indices  average,  as  Ripley l 
points  out,  two  units  below  other  German  indices. 

About  the  same  time  that  Ripley  had  come  to  the  fore- 
goingconclusion,  Dr.  Ammon  2  published  a  paper  on  the  same 
subject,  as  the  result  of  a  very  careful  inquiry.  As  this  is 
an  important  matter,  I  give  Amnion's  conclusions  for  the 
convenience  of  those  who  may  wish  to  correlate  the  cranial 
measurements  made  by  the  two  chief  Continental  schools. 

"Length. — To  obtain  the  French  length  from  German  measure- 
ments add  i  mm.  to  the  brachycephals  (80-84.9)  and  hyper- 
brachycephals  (85-89.9);  1.1  mm.  to  the  mesaticephals  (75-79.9) 
and  ultra-brachycephals  (90-94.9);  1.5  mm.  to  the  dolichoce- 
phals  (70-74.9),  and  1.4  mm.  to  the  extreme  brachycephals 
(95-100). 

"  Breadth. — Identical  in  both  methods. 

"  Index. — The  French  index  is  obtained  by  deducting  half  a 
unit  from  the  German  index;  or,  to  be  more  exact,  deduct  .6 
from  the  dolichocephals  and  .7  from  the  extreme  brachycephals 
instead  of  .5. 

"  Inversely,  to  transform  the  numbers  obtained  according  to 
the  French  method  into  those  of  the  German  method,  one  must 
deduct  1  mm.  from  the  length,  etc.,  and  add  .5  to  the  index." 

Collignon  points  out 3  that  one  is  too  apt  to  attach  to  the 
terms  dolichocephaly  and  brachycephaly  a  concrete  sense 
which  they  should  not  have. 

Thus  a  human  variety  may  by  the  proportions  of  the 
body  and  its  members  and  by  the  characters  of  the  face  and 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  520. 

2  Otto  Ammon,  "  La  Correlation  entre  l'indice  cephalometrique  de  Broca  et 
celui  d'lhering,"  E Anthropologic,  vii.,  1896,  p.  676. 

3  Mem.  Soc.  cTAnth.  de  Paris  (3),  i.,  1895,  p.  23. 


364  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

the  length  of  the  skull,  manifestly  resemble  a  dolichoce- 
phalic race  and  yet  have  a  cephalic  index  of  81  or  82.  Or 
another  variety  may  have  a  long  and  broad  body,  short  legs, 
a  low  flat  face  and  short  head,  and  other  characters  of  a 
brachycephalic  people,  and  yet  have  a  narrow  head,  giving 
an  index  of  78  or  79.  Collignon  would  respectively  allocate 
these  aberrant  varieties  to  the  dolichocephals  and  to  the 
brachycephals  respectively. 

One  knows  that  in  a  race  as  pure  as  possible  there  may 
be  a  range  in  the  cephalic  index  of  13  units,  that  is  to  say,  a 
pure  race  having  a  mean  index  of  84  may  normally  vary  be- 
tween 78  and  90,  and,  inversely,  a  race  having  a  mean  index 
of  JJ  may  oscillate  between  71  and  83. 

There  are  thus  normally,  and  without  any  foreign  influ- 
ences, some  individuals  of  a  brachycephalic  race  who  may 
be  relatively  dolichocephals,  and,  conversely,  there  may  be 
brachycephalic  individuals  in  a  dolichocephalic  race. 

When  the  mean  anterioposterior  diameter  of  the  cranium 
exceeds  190  mm.  in  the  living,  the  head  should  be  considered 
as  long,  and  the  race  to  which  it  belongs  is  ranged  as  a 
whole  in  the  great  dolichocephalic  group,  rather  than  in  the 
group  of  brachycephalic  races.  It  will  be  noted  that  Col- 
lignon for  the  sake  of  brevity  of  description  ignores  a  mesati- 
cephalic  group. 

Collignon  gives  '  the  following  examples : 

DOLICHOCEPHALIC  POPULATIONS. 

HEAD  CEPHALIC 

LENGTH.  INDEX. 

80  Tunisians  (Race  of  Djerid) 194-4  73-8 

41  Negroes  of  the  Soudan 195-5  74-5 

100  Coast  Tunisians 194-9  76.  r 

20  Pure  Arabs 193-3  77-2 

30  Mediterraneans 195-8  78.3 

100  Kymri  (of  France) I93-1  79-7 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  24. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  365 


BRACHYCEPHALIC   POPULATIONS. 


HEAD  CEPHALIC 

LENGTH.  INDEX. 


50  Tunisians  (of  Djerbah) 187.7  80.4 

1045  Manche  (N.  France) 188.3  83.0 

960  C6tes-du-Nord  (")     187.2  83.6 

100  Celts  (of  France) 187.6  84.9 

On  page  JJ  of  the  same  Memoir  he  suggests  the  index  of 
82  for  the  limit  of  dolichocephaly  and  brachycephaly  in  the 
living  subject. 

As  these  practical  instructions  are  intended  for  ethno- 
graphical survey  work  in  the  field  and  not  for  craniological 
purposes,  I  will  not  give  instructions  for  skull  measurements, 
but  will  refer  the  reader  to  such  works  as  Flower's  Osteologi- 
cal  Catalogue  (Part  I.,  "  Man")^/-//^  Royal  College  of  Sur- 
geons (1879);  Garson,  in  Notes  and  Queries  on  Anthropology 
( 1 892) ;  Topinard ' s  Elements  d  'A  nthropologie generale  (1885); 
Broca's  Instructions  crdniometriques  (1876);  De  Quatrefages 
et  Hamy's  Crania  Ethnic -a  (1882);  Garson,  "  The  Frankfort 
Craniometric  Agreement,  with  Critical  Remarks  thereon," 
Jour.  A  nth.  Inst.,  xiv.,  1884,  p.  64;  Schmidt's  Anthropolo- 
gische  Methoden  (Leipzig,  1888),  and  Macalister's  Anatomy; 
Quain's  Anatomy,  etc.  Professor  Macalister  is  writing  a 
book  which  will  thoroughly  cover  this  ground. 

The  only  skull  measurements  I  have  referred  to  are  the 
length,  breadth,  and  height,  and  the  two  measurements  re- 
quired for  the  nasal  index;  the  latter  have  been  sufficiently 
described  on  page  95.  The  length  of  the  skull  is  taken  by 
the  French,  English,  and  American  anthropologists  from  the 
glabella  (the  middle  line  between  the  brow-ridges)  to  the 
greatest  diameter  obtainable  behind  in  the  middle  line; 
this  gives  the  greatest  obtainable  mesial  length.  All  anthro- 
pologists take  the  greatest  breadth  wherever  found  above 
the  levels  of  the  ear-holes  ;  care  must  be  taken  that  the  calli- 
pers are   held    at  right  angles  to  the  median  longitudinal 


$66  THE   STUDY  OF  MAM 

(sagittal)  line,  and  that  the  two  ends  of  the  callipers  are  at 
the  same  level.  The  height  of  the  skull  is  the  diameter  be- 
tween the  basion  (the  middle  point  of  the  anterior  edge  of 
the  foramen  magnum)  and  the  bregma  (the  point  on  the 
vertex  where  the  frontal  and  interparietal  sutures  meet). 

Nasal  Measurements. — Dr.  R.  Collignon,  who  has  paid 
more  attention  than  any  other  anthropologist  to  the  nasal 
index  in  the  living,  draws  attention  '  to  the  great  care  that 
is  required  in  taking  the  measurements,  as,  owing  to  the  low 
units  of  the  dimensions,  even  small  differences  in  the  method 
employed  will  lead  to  considerable  differences  in  the  results. 
The  nasal  index  is  an  extremely  delicate  measurement,  and 
it  is  only  on  account  of  its  exceptional  ethnological  import- 
ance that  it  claims  so  much  attention  and  trouble. 

We  have  already  seen  that  the  index  is  the  ratio  of  the 
maximum  breadth  of  the  base  of  the  nose,  that  is,  of  the 
wings  of  the  nose,  to  its  height,  the  latter  being  taken  from 
the  root  to  the  point  of  insertion  of  the  septum. 

There  is  no  difficulty  about  the  first  measurement,  except 
that  care  must  be  taken  not  to  squeeze  the  wings  and  to 
guard  against  laughter,  which  often  happens,  and  which 
gives  a  false  platyrhiny  by  the  distension  of  the  nostrils. 
Distension  is  also  caused  by  breathing  through  the  nostrils; 
this  can  be  stopped  by  the  subject  keeping  his  mouth  open. 

The  second  measurement  is  less  easy,  and  in  certain  cases 
is  of  extreme  difficulty  owing  to  an  uncertainty  in  selecting 
the  upper  point  of  measurement. 

Among  the  great  majority  of  Europeans  the  condition 
does  not  exist ;  the  origin  of  the  root  of  the  nose  is  generally 
seen  at  a  glance  with  the  greatest  ease.  It  suffices  to  look 
at  the  face  in  profile,  and  to  place  one  arm  of  the  compass 
at  the  deepest  point  seen.     But  among  the  yellow  or  black 

1  "  La  Nomenclature  quinaire  de  l'indice  nasal  du  vivant,"  Revue  d' Anthro- 
pologic (3),  ii.,  1887,  p.  8. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL  INVESTIGATIONS  367 

races  and  among  some  Europeans  it  is  by  no  means  the 
same ;  the  line  of  the  forehead  very  often  passes  on  to  the 
nose  in  a  regular  curve,  which  does  not  present  any  change 
of  direction.  In  this  case,  Topinard  recommends  that  the 
subject  should  be  looked  at  full  face ;  usually  one  can  dis- 
tinguish a  slight  horizontal  fold  which  is  the  desired  spot; 
or  by  stroking  vertically  from  above  downwards  upon  the 
skin  of  the  lower  part  of  the  forehead,  the  fold  is  indicated 
in  the  great  majority  of  cases  with  great  clearness.  This 
should  be  lightly  marked  with  a  pencil. 

To  recapitulate :  In  order  to  determine  the  height  of  the 
nose,  stand  to  the  right  of  the  subject  and  look  at  his  pro- 
file ;  if  the  exact  spot  where  the  root  begins  is  clear,  place 
the  lower  arm  of  the  sliding  compass  against  the  angle 
which  the  septum  makes  with  the  upper  lip,  without  press- 
ing it  too  much,  and  gently  bring  down  the  upper  arm  to 
the  upper  spot.  If  there  is  any  doubt  about  the  latter, 
press  down  the  skin  of  the  forehead  with  the  left  hand, 
always  looking  at  the  profile,  so  as  to  appreciate  the  change 
of  direction  which  is  produced,  mark  it,  and  proceed  as 
above. 

Instead  of  the  ordinary  sliding  compass,  which  may  have 
sharp  points,  and  which  is  usually  difficult  to  use  with  pre- 
cision for  these  measurements,  Collignon  for  many  years  has 
employed  a  small,  light,  box-wood  sliding  compass,  which 
can  be  obtained  from  any  French  shoemaker,  and  which 
costs  only  ifr.  25  c. 

It  cannot  be  too  strongly  insisted  upon  that  the  subject 
must  be  measured  in  profile,  as  a  measurement  taken  in  full 
face  is  nearly  always  erroneous. 

One  further  detail  must  be  added  :  It  is  necessary  to  hold 
the  compass  in  the  right  hand,  to  apply  first  the  lower  arm 
against  the  septum  and  to  hold  it  there,  and  gently  to 
make  the  other  arm  descend  to  the  upper  point  of  measure- 


368  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

ment.  If  one  proceeds  in  the  inverse  manner,  starting  from 
above  and  drawing  the  sliding  arm  towards  the  septum,  one 
draws  down  the  skin,  and  so  a  lower  figuie  is  obtained  for 
the  nasal  height.* 

When  possible,  and  always  in  those  cases  where  there  is 
no  doubt,  the  measurement  should  be  read  to  half  a  milli- 
metre. 

The  naso-malar  index,  which  was  introduced  by  Oldfield 
Thomas,1  is  a  very  important  addition  to  facial  measure- 
ments, as  it  indicates  the  amount  of  the  projection  of  the 
bridge  of  the  nose.  The  basal  line  (bi-malar  line)  is  meas- 
ured from  the  outer  edge  of  each  orbit,  at  a  point  on  each 
side  about  2  or  4  mm.  below  the  fronto-malar  suture  in  the 
skull,  or  from  a  corresponding  point  in  the  living.  From 
these  points  another  measurement  is  taken,  this  time  with 
the  tape,  across  the  bridge  of  the  nose.  This  is  the  naso- 
malar  line.  The  difference  in  length  between  these  two  lines 
is  due  to  the  prominence  of  the  bridge  of  the  nose,  the 
formula  being: 

Naso-malar  line  X  100     _.    , 

— : — =Index. 

Bi-malar  line 

The  actual  position  of  the  two  malar  points  is  not  very 
important,  but  great  care  must  be  taken  that  the  two  meas- 
urements are  from  exactly  the  same  points,  so  it  is  well  to 
mark  them  in  the  first  instance. 

This  index  is  proving  one  of  great  importance,  and  it  has 
the  great  advantage  of  being  fairly  comparable  in  the  living 
and  on  skulls.  Sir  William  Flower  suggested  to  Mr.  Risley 
that  he  should  employ  it  in  India,  and  the  former's  prog- 
nostications as  to  its  usefulness  have  been  abundantly 
verified. 

1  Oldfield  Thomas,  "Account  of  a  Collection  of  Human  Skulls  from  Torres 
Straits,"  Journ.  Anth.  Inst.,  xiv.,  1885,  p.  332. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  369 

Risley  '  has  proposed  a  modification  of  the  classification 
adopted  provisionally  by  Oldfield  Thomas.  I  subjoin  both 
of  these: 

OLDFIELD   THOMAS.  RISLEY. 

—  107.5 Platyopic —  109.9 

107.5  —  110.0 Mesopic no  —  112.9 

no     -f-  Pro-opic 113  -f- 

The  size  of  the  schedules  issued  by  the  Ethnographical 
Committee  of  the  British  Association,  and  the  numerous  ob- 
servations required,  have,  it  is  feared,  deterred  many  from 
undertaking  this  branch  of  the  inquiry  who  might  otherwise 
have  been  so  disposed.  The  Committee,  while  urging  that 
the  full  complement  of  observations  should  be  taken  when- 
ever possible,  would  be  pleased  if  the  short  list  on  the  fol- 
lowing page  was  filled  up  by  observers  all  over  the  British 
Islands. 

The  circumference  of  the  head  is  taken  with  a  steel  or 
linen  tape  graduated  in  millimetres  (the  latter  can  be  ob- 
tained for  6d.  each).  The  measurement  is  taken  immedi- 
ately above  the  eyebrows,  beneath  the  ears,  and  round  the 
greatest  protuberance  behind;  the  tape  should  be  drawn  as 
tightly  as  possible,  care  being  taken  to  include  as  little  hair 
as  possible.  This  is  a  difficult  measurement  to  take  on 
women's  heads,  but  with  care  it  can  usually  be  done. 

Most  people  have  an  idea  of  their  weight,  and  it  is  gener- 
ally possible  for  people  to  get  themselves  weighed  without 
much  difficulty.  The  weight  should  be  reduced  to  pounds, 
and  if  not  accurately  made  should  be  qualified  by  "  about." 

The  following  few  hints  for  field  work  may,  perhaps,  prove 
useful.      Dr.  Beddoe  2  writes  : 

1  H.  H.  Risley,  "  The  Study  of  Ethnology  in  India,"  Journ.  Anth.  Inst., 
xx.,  1891,  p.  255. 

2  The  Races  of  Britain,  p.  8. 

24 


370 


THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 


1 

2 

2 

2 

2 

Afie 

Distric 
peop 

t  from  which  Father's 
le  come 

Distric 
peop 

:  from  which  Mother's 
le  come   

Hair 

Eyes 

Shape 

of  Nose 

Length 

HeaoN 

Breadth 

Index 

Height 

Nose  -i 

Breadth  

1  Index 

Circumference  of  Head 

Stature 

Weigh 

t 

1  This  space  can  be  utilised  for  the  name  of  the  locality  where  the  observations  are  made. 

2  These  spaces  are  for  the  names  of  the  subjects. 

Any  additional  information  can  be  added  underneath  the  "weight."     The  observer's 
name  and  address  and  the  date  should  be  written  on  the  back  or  elsewhere. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  37 1 

V  I  have  spoken  of  the  necessity  and  frequent  difficulty  of  ob- 
taining the  consent  of  the  owner  of  the  head  to  be  examined. 
His  reluctance  may  sometimes  be  overcome  by  means  of  money, 
without  going  to  the  extent  of  the  new  hat  always  jocularly  de- 
manded in  such  cases.  Sometimes  other  means  have  proved 
successful.  I  cannot  resist  detailing  those  by  which  I  succeeded 
in  obtaining  a  valuable  series  of  head-measurements  in  Kerry. 
Our  travelling  party  consisted  of  Dr.  Barnard  Davis,  Dr.  T. 
Wise,  Mr.  Windele,  and  myself.  Whenever  a  likely  little  squad 
of  natives  was  encountered  the  two  archaeologists  got  up  a  dispute 
about  the  relative  size  and  shape  of  their  own  heads,  which  I  was 
called  in  to  settle  with  the  callipers.  The  unsuspecting  Irishmen 
usually  entered  keenly  into  the  debate,  and  before  the  little  drama 
had  been  finished  were  eagerly  betting  on  the  sizes  of  their  own 
heads,  and  begging  to  have  their  wagers  determined  in  the  same 
manner." 

Following  the  suggestion  of  £)r.  Beddoe,  when  also  in 
the  west  of  Ireland,  I  told  the  natives  that  we  had  meas- 
ured a  number  of  people  in  Dublin,  and  we  wanted  to  see 
who  were  the  taller  and  who  had  the  larger  heads.  Gener- 
ally it  is  best  to  commence  with  the  stature,  as  if  it  were 
wanted  merely  to  find  out  who  were  the  tallest  men.  Most 
people  take  a  pride  in  having  large  heads,  and  so  vanity 
paves  the  way  for  the  cephalic  measurements.  The  subject 
then  becomes  interested  and  amused,  and  the  onlookers  in- 
dulge in  mild  chaff,  so  that  by  one  means  or  another  not 
only  can  the  above-mentioned  measurements  be  taken,  but 
others  may  be  added.  When  the  eye  and  hair  colours  and 
other  physical  features  are  noted,  a  very  fair  documental 
description  of  the  individual  has  been  secured.  The  subject 
is  generally  ready  enough  to  be  photographed,  both  full- 
face  and  side  view,  and  a  promise  of  a  copy  of  his  photo- 
graph will  usually  induce  a  recalcitrant  person  to  submit  to 
the  entire  operation. 


372  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

Sometimes  it  will  be  found  advantageous  to  explain  why 
the  measurements  are  wanted  ;  on  other  occasions  this  would 
be  useless.  One  old  man  who  had  never  been  photographed, 
and  who  had  refused  the  earnest  entreaties  of  his  family  to 
have  his  portrait  taken,  sat  in  a  chair  to  be  measured,  and 
I  took  a  front  and  side  view  of  his  face  before  he  realised 
what  had  happened,  and  when  he  found  out  he  was  very 
pleased.  Many  are  the  devices  that  have  to  be  adopted,  and 
varied  the  arguments  employed  to  induce  country  folk  to 
allow  themselves  to  be  measured. 

Photography. 

The  following  are  the  instructions  issued  by  the  Ethno- 
graphical Survey  Committee  with  regard  to  photographing 
the  typical  inhabitants  of  a  district : 

"  Facial  characteristics  are  conveniently  recorded  by  means  of 
photographs,  taken  in  the  three  ways  explained  below.  Amateurs 
in  photography  are  now  so  numerous  that  it  is  hoped  the  desired 
materials  may  be  abundantly  supplied.  At  least  twelve  more  or 
less  beardless  male  adults  and  twelve  female  adults  should  be 
photographed.  It  will  add  much  to  the  value  of  the  portrait  if 
these  same  persons  have  also  been  measured.  The  photographs 
should  be  mounted  on  cards,  each  card  bearing  the  name  of  the 
district,  and  a  letter  or  number  to  distinguish  the  individual  por- 
traits; the  cards  to  be  secured  together  by  a  thread  passing 
loosely  through  a  hole  in  each  of  their  upper  left-hand  corners. 
Three  sorts  of  portrait  are  wanted,  as  follows: 

"  (a)  A  few  portraits  of  such  persons  as  may,  in  the  opinion  of 
the  person  who  sends  them,  best  convey  the  peculiar  character- 
istics of  the  race.  These  may  be  taken  in  whatever  aspect  shall 
best  display  those  characteristics,  and  should  be  accompanied  by 
a  note  directing  attention  to  them. 

"  (b)  At  least  twelve  portraits  of  the  left  side  of  the  face  of  as 
many  different  adults  of  the  same  sex.     These  must  show  in  each 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  373 

case  the  exact  profile,  and  the  hair  should  be  so  arranged  as  to 
show  the  ear.  All  the  persons  should  occupy  in  turn  the  same 
chair  (with  movable  blocks  on  the  seat,  to  raise  the  sitters'  heads 
to  a  uniform  height),  the  camera  being  fixed  throughout  in  the 
same  place.  The  portraits  to  be  on  such  a  scale  that  the  distance 
between  the  top  of  the  head  and  the  bottom  of  the  chin  shall  in 
no  case  be  less  than  \\  inch.  Smaller  portraits  can  hardly  be 
utilised  in  any  way.  If  the  incidence  of  the  light  be  not  the  same 
in  all  cases  they  cannot  be  used  to  make  composite  portraits. 
By  attending  to  the  following  hints  the  successive  sitters  may  be 
made  to  occupy  so  nearly  the  same  position  that  the  camera  need 
hardly  be  refocussed.  In  regulating  the  height  of  the  head  it  is 
tedious  and  clumsy  to  arrange  the  proper  blocks  on  the  seat  by 
trial.  The  simpler  plan  is  to  make  the  sitter  first  take  his  place 
on  a  separate  seat  with  its  back  to  the  wall,  having  previously 
marked  on  the  wall,  at  heights  corresponding  to  those  of  the 
various  heights  of  head,  the  numbers  of  the  blocks  that  should 
be  used  in  each  case.  The  appropriate  number  of  the  sitter  is 
noted,  and  the  proper  blocks  are  placed  on  the  chair  with  the 
assurance  that  what  was  wanted  has  been  correctly  done.  The 
distance  of  the  sitter  from  the  camera  can  be  adjusted  with  much 
precision  by  fixing  a  looking-glass  in  the  wall  (say  five  feet  from 
his  chair),  so  that  he  can  see  the  reflection  of  his  face  in  it.  The 
backward  or  forward  position  of  the  sitter  is  easily  controlled  by 
the  operator,  if  he  looks  at  the  sitter's  head  over  the  middle  of 
the  camera,  against  a  mark  on  the  wall  beyond.  It  would  be  a 
considerable  aid  in  making  measurements  of  the  features  of  the 
portrait,  and  preventing  the  possibility  of  mistaking  the  district 
of  which  the  sitter  is  a  representative,  if  a  board  be  fixed  above 
his  head  in  the  place  of  his  profile,  on  which  a  scale  of  inches  is 
very  legibly  marked,  and  the  name  of  the  district  written.  This 
board  should  be  so  placed  as  just  to  fall  within  the  photographic 
plate.  The  background  should  be  of  a  medium  tint  (say  a  sheet 
of  light  brown  paper  pinned  against  the  wall  beyond),  very  dark 
and  very  light  tints  being  both  unsuitable  for  composite  photo- 
graphy. 


374  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

11  (c)  The  same  persons  who  were  taken  in  side  face  should  be 
subsequently  photographed  in  strictly  full  face.  They  should 
occupy  a  different  chair,  the  place  of  the  camera  being  changed 
in  accordance.  Time  will  be  greatly  saved  if  all  the  side  faces 
are  taken  first,  and  then  all  the  full  faces;  unless,  indeed,  there 
happen  to  be  two  operators,  each  with  his  own  camera,  ready  to 
take  the  same  persons  in  turn.  The  remarks  just  made  in  respect 
to  b  are,  in  principle,  more  or  less  applicable  to  the  present  case; 
but  the  previous  method  of  insuring  a  uniform  distance  between 
the  sitter  and  the  camera  ceases  to  be  appropriate. 

"  It  is  proposed  that  composites  of  some  of  these  groups  shall 
be  taken  by  Mr.  Galton,  so  far  as  his  time  allows." 

Although  it  is  advisable  to  adopt  Dr.  Francis  Galton's 
suggestions,  useful  photographs  can  be  obtained  by  having 
the  lens  of  the  camera  on  a  line  with  the  centre  of  the  head, 
and  by  taking  care  that  the  sitter  sits  squarely  in  front  or 
presents  a  true  profile.  It  is  important  to  provide  oneself 
with  a  soft,  neutral-coloured  background  which  can  be  rolled 
up  for  transport. 

In  order  to  get  reliable  data  it  is  necessary  to  have  a  large 
number  of  workers  in  every  part  of  the  country.  This  is 
work  which  might  well  be  undertaken  by  field  clubs  and 
other  local  societies ;  and  I  would  also  like  to  suggest  that 
the  local  photographic  societies  should  encourage  the  photo- 
graphic record  by  their  members  of  all  local  objects  and 
customs  that  have  any  anthropological  or  ethnographical  in- 
terest, not  omitting  field  portraits  of  typical  inhabitants. 
There  is  so  much  to  do,  and  so  much  is  fast  disappearing, 
that  we  require  the  assistance  of  as  many  societies  and  iso- 
lated workers  as  possible. 

In  order  that  the  work  done  may  be  known  to  the  Com- 
mittee and  a  record  of  it  filed  for  the  use  of  students,  all  the 
completed  schedules,  or  the  published  papers  based  thereon, 
and  a  copy  of  the  photographs  should  be  sent  to  the  secre- 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  375 

tary,  who  will    eventually  deposit  them  in  an  institution 
where  they  will  be  accessible  to  all  students. 

II. — INSTRUCTIONS   FOR  THE   COLLECTION   OF  FOLK-LORE 

Folk-lore  is  now  a  well-defined  study,  but  there  is  still 
considerable  ignorance  in  many  minds  concerning  the  sub- 
jects which  are  investigated,  the  methods  of  study,  and  the 
objects  of  these  researches. 

Everywhere,  and  at  all  times,  man  has  "  attempted  to 
explain  the  natural  phenomena  surrounding  and  affecting 
him.  When  such  explanations  are  universally  or  generally 
accepted  by  any  tribe  or  people  they  constitute  the  myth- 
ology and  to  some  extent  the  religious  beliefs  of  such  tribe 
or  people."  1 

Man  is  naturally  profoundly  affected  and  even  modified 
by  his  environment ;  the  physical  conditions  of  his  country 
and  climate,  the  nature  of  the  vegetation  and  of  the  animal 
life  around  him  all  leave  an  impress  on  his  character. 
The  friendly  as  well  as  the  inimical  relations  between  man 
and  man  have  given  rise  to  rules  to  govern  conduct  and 
intercourse,  and  these  have  crystallised  into  custom. 

When  man  changes  from  one  condition  to  another  he  still 
clings  to  his  old  beliefs  and  customs,  and  should  these  in 
process  of  time  cease  to  be  as  binding  to  him  or  as  sacred  as 
they  were  in  the  olden  time,  the  memories  of  them  will  be 
preserved  and  related  to  the  rising  generation,  to  be  again 
narrated  to  future  generations.  But  in  all  civilised  races 
there  are  less  cultured  people  who  have  lagged  behind  in  the 
march  of  civilisation  and  who  still  retain  a  greater  or  less 
amount  of  belief  in  the  ancient  traditions,  and  who  practise 
old  customs  though  it  be  but  in  an  attenuated  manner; 
these  are  the  "  folk,"  and  it  is  their  "  lore  "  which  is  the 

1  G.  L.  Gomme,  The  Handbook  of  Folk-lore,  1890,  p.  I. 


376  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

subject  of  inquiry.  In  other  words,  it  is  a  study  of  "  sur- 
vivals "  or  "  relics  of  an  unrecorded  past."  "  Folk-lore 
contains  the  survivals  of  the  oldest  and  rudest  culture  of 
man."1 

The  method  of  the  study  is  the  careful  collection,  "  com- 
parison, and  identification  of  the  survivals  of  archaic  beliefs, 
customs,  and  traditions  in  modern  ages." 

The  object  of  the  study  of  folk-lore  is  to  increase  our 
knowledge  about  ourselves.  The  vast  bulk  of  the  materials 
of  folk-lore  date  from  the  prehistoric  period  before  know- 
ledge was  committed  to  writing,  and  when  it  could  only  be 
perpetuated  orally.  As  Mr.  Hartland  has  said,2  "  To  this 
mode  of  preservation  and  communication,  as  well  as  to  the 
things  thus  preserved  and  communicated,  the  name  of  tradi- 
tion is  given,  and  folk-lore  is  the  science  of  tradition." 

The  study  of  folk-lore  is  not  unlike  that  of  vertebrate 
palaeontology.  The  palaeontologist  comes  across  remains 
which  are  usually  very  imperfect ;  by  careful  comparison 
with  other  fossils  and  with  recent  animals  he  can  approxi- 
mately, and  sometimes  almost  perfectly,  recover  the  form 
of  the  extinct  animal.  In  some  cases  it  will  be  found  to 
exactly  resemble  a  living  animal;  in  others  it  will  be  differ- 
ent. This  also  is  the  method  of  the  folk-lorist ;  he  checks 
his  survivals  by  comparisons  with  the  living  beliefs  and 
customs  of  savages,  and  the  resemblances  far  outnumber 
the  discrepancies.     One  might  almost   define  folk-lore  as 

psychical  palaeontology." 

The  range  of  subjects  comprised  under  folk-lore  is  very 
considerable ;  superstitions  connected  with  natural  objects, 
goblindom,  witchcraft,  leechcraft,  magic,  and  divination,  be- 
liefs relating  to  a  future  life,  and  superstitions  generally, 
may  be  classed  under  superstitions  belief  and  practice.     Fes- 

1  G.  L.  Gomme,  "  Presidential  Address,"  Folk-lore,  ii.,  1891,  p.  9. 

2  Report  of  a  lecture  in  the  Gloucestershire  Chronicle,  March  27,  1897. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  377 

tival  customs,  ceremonial  customs,  games,  and  local  customs 
are  grouped  as  traditional  customs.  Traditional  narratives 
include  hero-tales  or  sagas,  which  sometimes  degrade  into 
nursery  tales  or  Marchen ;  drolls,  fables,  and  the  like ; 
myths  of  creation,  deluge,  fire,  and  doom ;  ballads  and 
songs ;  place  legends  and  traditions.  Lastly,  folk-sayings 
comprise  jingles,  nursery  rhymes,  riddles,  proverbs,  nick- 
names, and  place-names. 

A  general  idea  of  the  scope  of  folk-lore  will  be  found  in 
an  excellent  little  book  by  Miss  Marian  Roalfe  Cox,  entitled 
An  Introduction  to  Folk-lore. 

The  following  is  the  schedule  that  is  issued  by  the  Ethno- 
graphical Survey  Committee : 


Place Name  of  Observer 

CURRENT  TRADITIONS  AND  BELIEFS. 

Folk-lore. 

"  Every  item  of  folk-lore  should  be  collected,  consisting  of 
customs,  traditions,  superstitions,  sayings  of  the  people,  games, 
and  any  superstitions  connected  with  special  days,  marriages, 
births,  deaths,  cultivation  of  the  land,  election  of  local  officers,  or 
other  events.  Each  item  should  be  written  legibly  on  a  sepa- 
rate piece  of  paper,  and  the  name,  occupation,  and  age  of  the 
person  from  whom  the  information  is  obtained  should  in  all  cases 
be  carefully  recorded.  If  a  custom  or  tradition  relates  to  a  par- 
ticular place  or  object,  especially  if  it  relates  to  a  curious  natural 
feature  of  the  district,  or  to  an  ancient  monument  or  camp,  some 
information  should  be  given  about  such  place  or  monument. 
Sometimes  a  custom,  tradition,  or  superstition  may  relate  to  a 
particular  family  or  group  of  persons,  and  not  generally  to  the 
whole  population ;  and,  in  this  case,  care  should  be  exercised  in 
giving  necessary  particulars.  Any  objects  which  are  used  for 
local  ceremonies,  such  as  masks,  ribbons,  coloured  dresses, 
etc.,   should  be   described    accurately,   and,    if  possible,   photo- 


378  THE    STUDY   OF  MAN 

graphed ;  or  might  be  forwarded  to  London,  either  for  permanent 
location  or  to  be  drawn  or  photographed.  Any  superstitions  that 
are  believed  at  one  place  and  professedly  disbelieved  at  another, 
or  the  exact  opposite  believed,  should  be  most  carefully  noted. 

"  The  following  questions  are  examples  of  the  kind  and  direc- 
tion of  the  inquiries  to  be  made,  and  are  not  intended  to  confine 
the  inquirer  to  the  special  subjects  referred  to  in  them,  nor  to 
limit  the  replies  to  categorical  answers.  The  numbers  within 
parentheses  refer  to  the  corresponding  articles  in  the  Handbook 
of  Folk-lore  (published  by  Nutt,  270  Strand,  London). 

(4)    Relate  any  tradition  as  to  the  origin  of  mountains  or  as  to 
giants  being  entombed  therein. 
Are   there   any    traditions    about    giants  or  dwarfs  in  the 

district  ?     Relate  them. 
Is  there  a  story  about  a  Blinded  Giant  like  that  of  Poly- 
phemus ? 

(13)  Describe  any  ceremonies  performed  at  certain  times  in 
connection  with  mountains. 

(16)    Relate  any  traditions  or  beliefs  about  caves. 

(19)  Are  any  customs  performed  on  islands  not  usually  in- 
habited ?     Are  they  used  as  burial  places  ? 

(25)  Describe  any  practices  of  leaving  small  objects,  articles 
of  dress,  etc.,  at  wells. 

(29)    Are  there  spirits  of  rivers  or  streams  ?     Give  their  names. 

(32)  Describe  any  practices  of  casting  small  objects,  articles  of 
dress,  etc.,  in  the  rivers. 

(^^)  Are  running  waters  supposed  not  to  allow  criminals  or  evil 
spirits  to  cross  them.  ? 

(39)  Describe  any  customs  at  the  choosing  of  a  site  for  building, 
and  relate  any  traditions  as  to  the  site  or  erection  of  any 
building. 

(42)  Is   there    a   practice   of   sprinkling    foundations    with  the 

blood  of  animals,  a  bull,  or  a  cock  ? 

(43)  Does   the   building   of   a   house   cause   the   death  of   the 

builder  ? 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  379 

(48,  49,  50)  Relate  any  traditions  of  the  sun,  moon,  stars. 
(62)    Describe    the    customs    of  fishermen    at   launching   their 
boats. 

Give  any  omens  believed  in  by  fishermen. 

Is  it  unlucky  to  assist  a  drowning  person  ? 

What  ceremonies  are  performed  when  trees  are  felled  ? 

Describe  any  custom  of  placing  rags  and  other  small  ob- 
jects upon  bushes  or  trees. 

Describe  any  May-pole  customs  and  dances. 

Describe  any  customs  of  wassailing  of  fruit  trees, 

Are  split  trees  used  in  divination  or  for  the  cure  of  disease  ? 

Describe  any  ceremonies  used  for  love  divination  with 
plants  or  trees. 

Describe  the  garlands  made  and  used  at  ceremonies. 

What  animals  are  considered  lucky  and  what  unlucky  to 
meet,  come  in  contact  with,  or  kill  ? 

Describe  any  customs  in  which  animals  are  sacrificed,  or 
driven  away  from  house  or  village. 

Describe  customs  in  which  men  dress  up  as  animals. 

Give  the  names  of  the  local  demons,  fairies,  pixies, 
ghosts,  etc.     Have  any  of  them  personal  proper  names  ? 

Their  habits,  whether  gregarious  or  solitary.  Do  they 
use  special  implements  ? 

Form  and  appearance,  if  beautiful  or  hideous,  small  in 
stature,  different  at  different  times. 

Character,  if  merry,  mischievous,  sulky,  spiteful,  indus- 
trious, stupid,  easily  outwitted. 

Occupations,  music,  dancing,  helping  mankind,  carrying 
on  mining,  agricultural  work. 

Haunts  or  habitations,  if  human  dwellings,  mounds,  bur- 
rows, mines,  forests,  boggy  moorlands,  waters,  the 
underworld,  dolmens,  stone  circles. 

Give  the  details  of  any  practices  connected  with  the 
worship  of  the  local  saint. 

Are  sacrifices  or  offerings  made  to  the  local  saint,  on  what 
days,  and  when  ? 


38o 


THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 


(192)    What  is  the  shrine  of  the  local  saint  ? 

(210)  Witchcraft.  Describe  minutely  the  ceremonies  per- 
formed by  the  witch.  What  preliminary  ceremony  took 
place  to  protect  the  witch  ? 

(294)  Are  charms    used    to  find  evil  spirits  and    prevent  their 

moving  away  ? 

(295)  Are  amulets,   talismans,   written  bits  of  paper,   gestures, 

etc.,  used  to  avert  evil  or  to  ensure  good  ?     If  so,  how, 
when,  where  ? 

(297)  Are  skulls  of  animals,   or  horses,  or  other  objects  hung 

up  in  trees,  to  avert  the  evil  eye  and  other  malign  in- 
fluences ? 

(298)  What  methods  are  employed  for  divining  future  events  ? 

What  omens  are  believed  in  ? 

(353)    What  superstitions  are  attached  to  women's  work  as  such  ? 

(356)  Are  women  ever  excluded  from  any  occupations,  cere- 
monies, or  places  ? 

(358)    What  superstitions  are  attached  to  the  status  of  widowhood  ? 

(366)  Are  particular  parts  of  any  town  or  village,  or  particular 
sections  of  any  community,  entirely  occupied  in  one 
trade  or  occupation  ? 

(368)  Have    they    customs  and    superstitions   peculiar  to  their 

occupation  ? 

(369)  Do    they   intermarry  among  themselves,    and  keep  aloof 

from  other  people  ? 
(373)    Have  they  any  processions  or  festivals  ? 
(422)    What  parts  of  the  body  are  superstitiously  regarded  ? 
(432)    Are  bones,  nails,  hair,  the  subject  of  particular  customs 

or  superstitions;  and  is  anything  done  with  bones  when 

accidentally  discovered  ? 
(436)    Is  dressing  ever  considered  as  a  special  ceremonial;  are 

omens  drawn  from  accidents  in  dressing  ? 

(452)  Are  any  parts  of  the  house  considered  sacred  ? 

(453)  Is  the  threshold  the  object  of  any  ceremony;  is  it  adorned 

with  garlands;    is  it  guarded  by  a  horseshoe  or  other 
object  ? 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  38  I 

(454)  Are  any  ceremonies  performed  at  the  hearth;  are  the 
ashes  used  for  divination;  is  the  fire  ever  kept  burning 
for  any  continuous  period  ? 

(456)  Is  it  unlucky  to  give  fire  from  the  hearth  to  strangers 
always,  or  when  ? 

(467)  Is  there  any  ceremony  on  leaving  a  house,  or  on  first  oc- 
cupying a  house  ? 

(509)  What  are  the  chief  festivals,  and  what  the  lesser  festivals 
observed  ? 

(515)  Explain  the  popular  belief  in  the  object  of  each  festival. 

(516)  Describe    the    customs    and  observances  appertaining  to 

each  festival. 
(540)    When  does  the  New  Year  popularly  begin  ? 

State  the  superstitions  or  legends  known  to  attach  to — 
(a)   Halloween  (both  old  and  new  styles). 
\b)    May  Eve. 

(c)  Midsummer  Day  and  St.  John's  Eve. 

(d)  Lammas,  or  August  1st. 

(e)  New  Year's  Day. 
(/)  Christmas. 

Is  there  any  superstition  as  to  the  first  person  who  enters  a     \^ 

house  in  the  New  Year  ?     Is  stress  laid  upon  the  colour      ,    / 

of  complexion  and  hair  ? 
(567)    What  are  the  customs  observed  at  the  birth  of  children  ? 
(588)    Describe   the    ceremonies    practised    at    courtship    and 

marriage. 
(623)    Describe  the  ceremonies  at  death  and  burial. 
(669)    Describe  any  games  of  ball  or  any  games  with  string,  or 

other  games. 
(674)    Describe  all  nursery  games  of  children. 
(686)    Is  there  any  special  rule  of  succession  to  property  ? 
(703)    Is  any  stone  or  group  of  stones,  or  any  ancient  monument 

or  ancient  tree  connected  with  local  customs  ? 
(706)    Are  any  special  parts  of  the  village  or  town  the  subject  of 

particular    rights,    privileges,    or  disabilities;    do  these 

parts  bear  any  particular  names  ? 


382  THE    STUDY  OF  MAN 

(711)    Describe  special  local  modes  of  punishment  or  of  lynch 
law. 

(719)    Describe  special  customs  observed  at  ploughing,  harrow- 
ing,   sowing,   manuring,    haymaking,   apple    gathering, 
corn  harvest,  hemp  harvest,  flax  harvest,  potato  gather- 
ing, threshing,  flax-picking,  and  hemp-picking. 
"  The  collections  under  this  head  will  be  digested  by  Professor 

Rhys  and  the  representatives  of  the  Folk-lore  Society." 

Miss  Burne 1  has  such  an  honourable  reputation  as  a  collec- 
tor of  folk-lore  that  I  cannot  do  better  than  reprint  some  of 
her  valuable  advice : 

"  To  begin  with,  we  need  a  careful  geographical  examination 
of  the  habitats  and  boundaries  of  the  various  items  of  English 
folk-lore,  such  as  the  English  Dialect  Society  has  made  and  is 
making  of  dialectal  boundaries.  The  results-which  may  be  ex- 
pected from  the  comparison  of  such  a  record  of  English  folk-lore, 
with  evidence  obtained  from  other  lines  of  study,  seem  to  open  a 
vista  of  possible  discovery.  There  is  nothing  like  speaking  from  ex- 
perience, so  I  will  illustrate  my  meaning  from  personal  knowledge. 

"  It  is  generally  customary  in  England  to  hire  farm  servants  by 
the  year,  but  the  hiring-time  varies  in  different  places.  In  North- 
east Shropshire  the  hiring-time  is  Christmas;  in  South-west  Shrop- 
shire it  is  May.  I  took  great  pains  to  pick  out  the  boundary  line 
between  these  two  customs,  market-town  by  market-town,  and 
almost  village  by  village,  and  I  found  it  coincide  almost  exactly 
with  the  boundary  line  of  the  change  of  dialect  between  north- 
east and  south-west,  which  is  very  marked;  and  very  fairly  also 
with  the  boundary  between  the  diocese  of  Lichfield  (the  ancient 
bishopric  of  the  Mercians)  on  the  north-east,  and  the  Welsh 
diocese  of  St.  Asaph  and  the  diocese  of  Hereford  (the  old 
kingdom   of   the    Hecanas  or  Magesaetas)    on    the    south-west.2 

1  Charlotte  S.  Burne,  "  The  Collection  of  English  Folk-lore,"  Folk-lore,  i., 
1890,  p.  313. 

4  For  a  similar  case  of  diocesan  boundaries  coinciding  with  tribal  frontiers, 
see  p.  in,  ante. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL  INVESTIGATIONS  383 

Moreover,  the  south-western  custom  of  hiring  prevails  over  a 
considerable  part  of  North  Wales,  while  hiring  at  Christmas  pre- 
vails in  Cheshire  and  North  Staffordshire. 

"  Again,  '  souling,'  or  begging  for  apples,  on  the  eve  of  All 
Saints'  Day  (November  1st),  is  a  common  custom  in  that  part  of 
Shropshire  where  Christmas  hirings  occur,  and  in  North  Stafford- 
shire; but  in  South  Staffordshire  I  believe  the  same  custom  is,  or 
was,  observed,  not  on  All  Saints'  but  on  St.  Clement's  Eve 
(November  21st).  Once  more  :  In  South  Staffordshire  and  in 
South  Shropshire,  as  far  north  as  Shrewsbury,  Mothering  Sunday 
is  known,  if  not  observed;  but  I  have  never  met  with  anyone  in 
the  north  of  either  county  who  had  heard  of  it.  If  such  bound- 
aries were  mapped  out  over  the  whole  of  England,  and  compared 
with  other  evidence,  they  would  almost  certainly  yield  valuable 
historical  and  ethnological  results. 

"It  is  comparatively  easy  to  pick  out  the  boundaries  of  a 
custom,  but  very  difficult  to  discover  those  of  a  superstitious 
opinion.  Curious  bits  of  superstition  and  '  luck  '  may  be  carried 
about  the  country  in  so  many  ways,  to  so  many  unexpected  places, 
in  a  manner  that  would  be  impossible  to  a  popular  custom.  You 
perhaps  come  across  some  old  woman  who  strongly  objects  to 
your  bringing,  it  may  be  snowdrops,  or  catkins,  or  perhaps  haw- 
thorn, into  her  house,  while  her  neighbours  are  not  in  the  least 
offended  by  it.  Now  she  may  be  the  sole  surviving  depositary  of 
a  genuine  piece  of  local  folk-lore,  or  she  may  be  following  the  in- 
structions of  a  grandmother  who  came  from  the  other  end  of 
England,  and  she  may  be  quite  unable  to  tell  you  how  she  ac- 
quired her  views  on  the  subject.  In  many  cases,  I  think,  the 
collector  can  do  no  more  than  set  down  the  name  of  the  place 
where,  or  the  informant  from  whom,  he  obtained  the  several 
items,  without  committing  himself  to  any  statement  as  to  how  far 
they  are  universal  or  not. 

11  Negative  evidence,  again,  is  most  difficult  to  obtain,  but 
valuable  in  proportion  to  the  difficulty  of  proving  the  negative. 
In  fact,  it  can  only  be  proved  (as  it  has  been  remarked  to  me)  if 
a  collector  gets  hold  of  a  thorough  believer  in  the  superstitions 


384  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

of  his  locality,  and  can  find  out  if  there  are  any  other  supersti- 
tions of  other  localities  which  he  decidedly  does  not  believe  in, 
any  that  he  laughs  at,  any  that  he  looks  upon  as  stupid  or  '  super- 
stitious,' while  his  own  belief,  of  course,  is  not  '  superstitious  ' ! 

"  For  myself,"  continues  Miss  Burne,  "  I  have  not  found  that 
the  English  poor  laugh  at  superstitions  they  are  not  acquainted 
with,  unless  they  are,  as  many  are,  superior  to  superstition  in  gen- 
eral. They  do  not  get  farther  than  a  slow,  grave  remark,  '  No,  I 
niver  heered  that.  I  shouldna  think  as  there  can  be  anything  in 
that.  Now,  as  to  (so  and  so),  that 's  true,  that  is.  For  my  gron- 
fayther  knowed  a  mon  .  .  .'etcetera!  But  it  is  beyond  ques- 
tion that  to  ascertain  what  a  superstitious  man  does  not,  is  quite 
as  valuable  for  our  purpose  as  to  learn  what  he  does  know.  Even 
then  the  collectors  should  not  be  too  hasty  in  drawing  conclu- 
sions. The  information  he  fails  again  and  again  to  obtain  may 
some  day  crop  up  quite  unexpectedly  at  his  very  doors. 

"  The  ideal  of  geographical  collection  would  be  reached  if  a 
number  of  collectors  would  undertake  definite  areas  adjoining 
each  other — say,  for  instance,  the  several  hundreds  of  a  county — 
would  set  down  what  is  known,  and  what,  after  every  possible 
inquiry,  is  not  known  there,  and  would  then  compare  results." 

Miss  Burne  next  discusses  the  question  of  the  relations 
between  folk-lore  and  history.  "  The  early  history  of  every 
nation  is  dependent  on  oral  tradition,  not  on  written  records, 
and  so  is  open  to  doubt.  But  the  questions,  How  much  de- 
pendence may  be  placed  upon  tradition  ?  and  How  long  the 
remembrance  of  an  event  may  be  preserved  among  unlet- 
tered people  ?  are  by  no  means  unimportant."  She  gives 
several  examples,  and  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
folk,  even  in  England,  do  preserve  some  memory  of  histori- 
cal events  for  three  or  even  four  centuries. 

The  consideration  of  the  influence  of  folk-lore  on  history 
naturally  leads  to  the  subject  of  the  influence  of  history  on 
folk-lore.       Miss   Burne  instances  the  common  Mummers' 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  385 

Play,  which  "  comes  to  us  like  a  traveller  from  a  journey, 
laden  with  curiosities  collected  by  the  way." 

A  custom  may  die  out  in  one  parish  and  take  a  new  lease 
of  life  in  another  owing  to  purely  local  and  temporary 
causes. 

Miss  Burne  gives  very  valuable  advice  in  the  personal 
collecting  of  English  folk-lore. 

"  If  you  wish  to  understand  folk-lore  you  must  learn  to  under- 
stand the  folk.  You  must  know  what  the  folk  think,  and  how 
they  act  on  subjects  such  as  folk-lore  touches,  and  observe  how 
their  minds  form  the  natural  background  to  the  superstitions  they 
act  on,  the  customs  they  practise,  the  tales  they  tell." 

She  gives  numerous  interesting  examples  of  the  mental 
attitude  of  the  folk. 

Lastly,  Miss  Burne  gives  some  very  useful  hints  about 
the  actual  work  of  collecting. 

"  The  best  collecting  is  that  which  is  done  by  accident,  by 
living  among  the  people  and  garnering  up  the  sayings  and  stories 
they  let  fall  from  time  to  time.  But  one  can  hardly  make  a  com- 
plete collection,  even  within  a  limited  area,  in  this  way,  and 
deliberate  search  is  therefore  necessary.  One  needs  first  to  know 
where  to  look,  and  the  educated  people  of  the  neighbourhood 
cannot  always  help  one.  Too  often  the  collector  is  met  with  the 
dignified  repulse,  '  Our  people  are  not  superstitious,  I  am  glad 
to  say ' ;  and  it  is  not  given  to  everyone  to  be  able  to  confute  the 
assertion,  as  the  Rev.  Elias  Owen,  in  a  paper  on  '  Montgomery- 
shire Superstitions,'  '  relates  that  he  once  did.  His  errand  in 
the  parish  where  it  was  made  was  to  inspect  the  schools,  and  at 
the  close  of  his  examination  he  asked  the  first  class,  '  Now,  child- 
ren, can  you  tell  me  of  any  place  where  there  is  a  buggan  '  (a 
ghost  or  bogey)  '  to  be  seen,  or  of  anyone  who  has  ever  seen 
one  ?  '  Instantly  every  hand  in  the  class  was  stretched  out,  and 
1  Montgomeryshire  Collections,  xv.,  part  i.,  p.  135. 
25 


386  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

every  child  had  a  story  to  tell.  He  then  asked,  '  Which  of  you 
can  tell  me  of  a  cure  for  warts  ?  '  with  like  results,  greatly  to  the 
discomfiture  of  his  friend  the  clergyman,  who  had  fondly  im- 
agined there  was  no  superstition  in  his  parish!  The  clergy  are 
very  liable  to  this  illusion,  because  the  people  are  apt  to  keep 
superstition  out  of  their  way,  which  in  itself  is  a  not  uninstructive 
folk-loric  item.  Lawyers,  doctors,  and  especially  land-agents 
and  gentlemen-farmers  are  often  much  better  able  to  help  than 
are  the  clergy. 

"  When  visiting  a  strange  place  with  the  set  purpose  of  per- 
sonal collecting,  the  best  way  of  beginning  is,  perhaps,  to  get  the 
parish  clerk  or  sexton  to  show  the  church,  and  then  to  draw  him 
out  on  bell-ringing  and  burying  customs,  and  to  obtain  from  him 
the  names  of  the  '  oldest  inhabitants  '  for  further  inquiry.  Fail- 
ing the  sexton,  the  village  inn-keeper  might  be  a  good  starting- 
point.  Then  a  visit  may  be  paid  to  the  school  in  the  midday 
'  recess,'  and  the  children  may  be  bribed  to  play  all  the  games 
they  know.  Possibly  some  bits  of  local  legend  may  be  gleaned 
from  them  as  a  foundation  for  future  inquiries. 

"  Old  household  or  family  customs  are  best  preserved  in  soli- 
tary farmhouses,  especially  if  tenanted  by  the  same  family  for 
several  generations.  But  it  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  a  very 
remote  and  thinly  populated  parish  will  necessarily  yield  more 
folk-lore  of  all  kinds  than  another.  A  scanty  stay-at-home  popu- 
lation does  not  preserve  legends  well,  and  has  not  esprit  de  co?ps 
sufficient  for  the  celebration  of  public  customs.  A  large  village, 
or  a  market-town  quite  in  the  country,  is  generally  the  best  place  to 
find  these ;  and  the  '  lowest  of  the  people  ' — the  chimney-sweepers, 
brick-makers,  besom-makers,  hawkers,  tinkers,  and  other  trades 
in  which  work  is  irregular — are  those  who  keep  up  old  games, 
songs,  dances,  and  dramatic  performances.  Most  villages  have 
their  doctress,  generally  an  intelligent  old  woman,  who,  never- 
theless, mixes  something  of  superstition  with  her  remedies. 

11  Superstitious  opinions,  though  they  flourish  most,  of  course, 
among  the  lower  classes,  cannot  well  be  collected  direct  from 
them,  because  they  really  do  not  understand  what  superstition  is, 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  387 

and  cannot,  as  they  say,  '  make  out  what  the  gentleman  is  driving 
at.'  They  must  be  inquired  for  among  the  class  of  small  em- 
ployers, who  have  a  little  more  cultivation  than  their  work-people, 
but  yet  live  on  terms  of  sufficient  familiarity  with  them  to  know 
their  ideas  thoroughly  and  to  share  a  good  many  of  them!  A 
little  patient  effort  will  in  all  probability  enable  the  collector  to 
make  the  acquaintance  of  some  old  grandfather  or  grandmother 
of  this  class,  who,  sitting  in  the  chimney-corner  of  some  old- 
fashioned  kitchen,  loves  nothing  better  than  to  pour  out  tales  of 
'old  times.'  Here  is  the  collector's  opportunity!  .  .  .  They 
are  excellent  company,  these  old  people!  if  one  can  but  get  them 
to  talk  of  their  past  lives,  and  not  of  their  present  ailments;  and 
they  are  dying  around  us  every  day,  and  their  traditions  are  dying 
with  them,  for  they  have  left  off  transmitting  them  to  their  child- 
ren. If  the  folk-lore  of  England  is  not  recorded  soon  it  will 
never  be  recorded  at  all,  for  these  '  foot-prints  in  the  sands  of 
time '  are  fast  being  trampled  out  by  the  hurrying  feet  of  the 
busy  multitudes  of  the  Present."  ' 

The  need  for  recording  all  local  folk-lore  is  very  pressing. 
In  some  districts,  as  in  the  Lincolnshire  Cars,  much  still  re- 
mains, as  has  been  sympathetically  recorded  by  Mrs.  M.  C. 
Balfour.2    * 

"  With  the  barren  Cars  of  the  older  times  is  connected  a  peasantry 
that  is  changing  as  the  soil  itself  has  changed,  only  more  gradu- 
ally, for  the  sluggish  current  of  their  life  and  habit  is  but  slowly 
beaten  back  by  the  impetus  of  modern  innovations.  ...  It 
seems  as  if  it  were  off  the  high-road,  so  to  speak,  of  busy  modern 
English  life;  in  these  days  of  depression  amongst  farmers,  and 
of  absentee  landlords,  it  is  visited  by  few  strangers;  and  the  only 
resident  upper  class  is  represented  by  the  clergy  and  a  very 
mixed  set  of  tenant-farmers,  who,  in  trouble  themselves,  generally 
care  little  for  the  people  under  them,  except  as  regards  their 
work  and  pay. 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  330.       2  "  Legends  of  the  Cars,"  Folk-lore,  ii.,  1891,  p.  147. 


388  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  This  is,  I  dare  say,  unavoidable;  but  it  throws  the  people 
back  on  themselves,  and  accounts,  no  doubt,  for  the  survival  of 
much  amongst  them  which  has  decayed  elsewhere.  Even  their 
speech  sounds  strange  to  a  modern  English  ear,  for  it  is  almost 
pure  Saxon,  and  keeps  many  of  the  original  inflexions  which  we 
have  lost. 

"  The  people  themselves  are  not  easy  to  make  friends  with,  for 
they  are  strongly  suspicious  of  strangers;  but  once  won  over,  are 
said  to  be  staunch  and  faithful  .  .  .  and  intensely  averse  to 
change  or  innovation  of  any  sort;  many  of  them  live  and  die 
within  the  limits  of  a  narrow  parish,  outside  of  which  they  never 
set  foot.  The  younger  generations  are  changing;  but  they  show 
less  disbelief  in  the  old  legends  than  indifference  to  them;  they 
seem  growing,  not  so  much  less  superstitious  as  less  impression- 
able. But  in  some  of  the  old  people  there  is  still  a  simple,  serious 
faith  that  is  delightful,  and  I  do  not  think  that  elsewhere  in  Eng- 
land one  could  nowadays  find  such  a  childlike  certainty  of  unseen 
things  or  such  an  unquestioning  belief  in  supernatural  powers. 
.  .  .  It  is  not  easy,  in  so  short  a  notice,  to  present  vividly  the 
curious  mixture  of  rusticity  and  savagery,  of  superstition  and  in- 
difference, of  ignorance  and  shrewdness,  which  is  found  in  these 
peasants.  .  .  .  The  old  and  simple  heathendom  still  lay  un- 
touched, though  hidden  below  successive  varnishes  of  superstition, 
religion,  and  civilisation."  1 

Dr.  Douglas  Hyde,2  the  poet,  who  has  the  love  of  the  old 
Ireland  within  him,  writes: 

"  Such  myth  stories  as  these  ought  to  be  preserved,  since  they 
are  about  the  last  visible  link  connecting  civilised  with  pre-his- 
toric  man,  for,  of  all  the  traces  that  man  in  his  earliest  period  has 
left  behind  him,  there  is  nothing  except  a  few  drilled  stones  or 
flint  arrow-heads  that  approaches  the  antiquity  of  these  tales,  as 
told  to-day  by  a  half-starving  peasant  in  a  smoky  Connacht  cabin. 

1  "Legends  of  the  Cars,"  Folk-lore,  ii.,  1891,  p.  257. 

2  Douglas  Hyde,  Beside  the  Fire,  a  Collection  of  Irish  Gaelic  Folk  Stories,  1890, 
p.  xli. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL  INVESTIGATIONS  389 

"  It  is  time  to  say  a  word  about  the  narrators  of  these  stories. 
The  people  who  can  recite  them  are,  as  far  as  my  researches 
have  gone,  to  be  found  only  among  the  oldest,  most  neglected, 
and  poorest  of  the  Irish-speaking  population.  English-speaking 
people  either  do  not  know  them  at  all,  or  else  tell  them  in  so  bald 
and  condensed  a  form  as  to  be  useless.  Almost  all  the  men 
from  whom  I  used  to  hear  stories,  in  the  County  Roscommon, 
are  dead.  Ten  or  fifteen  years  ago  I  used  to  hear  a  great  many 
stories,  but  I  did  not  understand  their  value.  Now,  when  I  go 
back  for  them,  I  cannot  find  them.  They  have  died  out,  and 
will  never  again  be  heard  on  the  hillsides,  where  they  probably 
existed  for  a  couple  of  thousand  years  ;  they  will  never  be  re- 
peated there  again,  to  use  the  Irish  phrase,  *  while  grass  grows  or 
water  runs.'  One  old  man  '  had  at  one  time,'  as  he  expressed  it, 
1  the  full  of  a  sack  of  stories,'  but  he  had  forgotten  them.  His 
grandchildren  stood  by  his  knee  while  he  told  me  one  or  two, 
but  it  was  evident  they  did  not  understand  a  word  (as  he  was 
telling  the  stories  in  Irish).  His  son  and  daughter  laughed  at 
them  as  nonsense.  Even  in  Achill,  where,  if  anywhere  one  ought 
to  find  folk-stories  in  their  purity,  a  fine-looking,  dark  man  of 
about  forty-five,  who  told  me  a  number  of  them,  and  could  re- 
peat Ossian's  poems,  assured  me  that  now-a-days  when  he  went 
into  a  house  in  the  evening,  and  the  old  people  got  him  to  recite, 
the  boys  would  go  out  ;  '  they  would  n't  understand  me,'  said  he, 
1  and  when  they  would  n't,  they  'd  sooner  be  listening  to  the  low- 
ing of  the  cows.'  This,  too,  is  an  island  where  many  people 
cannot  speak  English." 

Hyde  reminds  us  that  at  the  time  of  the  famine  in  '47, 
this  pure  Aryan  language  (Irish)  was  spoken  by  at  least  four 
million  souls  (more  than  the  whole  population  of  Switzer- 
land), and  it  promises  in  a  few  years  to  become  as  extinct 
as  Cornish. 

Hyde  '  gives  the  following  valuable  advice  as  to  collecting 
folk-tales  in  Ireland : 

1  Loc.  cit.,  p.  xlv. 


390  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

"  I  may  mention  here  that  it  is  not  as  easy  a  thing  as  might  be 
imagined  to  collect  Irish  stories.  One  hears  that  tales  are  to  be 
had  from  such  and  such  a  man,  generally,  alas  !  a  very  old  one. 
With  difficulty  one  manages  to  find  him  out,  only  to  discover, 
probably,  that  he  has  some  work  on  hand.  If  it  happens  to  be 
harvest  time  it  is  nearly  useless  going  to  him  at  all,  unless  one  is 
prepared  to  sit  up  with  him  all  night,  for  his  mind  is  sure  to  be 
so  distraught  with  harvest  operations  that  he  can  tell  you  noth- 
ing. If  it  is  winter  time,  however,  and  you  fortunately  find  him 
unoccupied,  nevertheless,  it  requires  some  management  to  get 
him  to  tell  his  stories.  Half  a  glass  of  ishka-baha,  a  pipe  of  to- 
bacco, and  a  story  of  one's  own  are  the  best  things  to  begin  with. 
If,  however,  you  start  to  take  down  the  story  verbatim,  with 
pencil  and  paper,  as  an  unwary  collector  might  do,  you  de- 
stroy all,  or  your  shanachie  becomes  irritable.  He  will  not 
wait  for  you  to  write  down  your  sentence,  and  if  you  call 
out,  '  stop,  stop,  wait  till  I  get  this  down,'  he  will  forget  what 
he  was  going  to  tell  you,  and  you  will  not  get  a  third  of  his 
story,  though  you  may  think  you  have  it  all.  What  you  must 
generally  do  is  to  sit  quietly  smoking  your  pipe,  without  the 
slightest  interruption,  not  even  when  he  comes  to  words  and 
phrases  which  you  do  not  understand.  He  must  be  allowed 
his  own  way  to  the  end,  and  then,  after  judiciously  praising 
him  and  discussing  the  story,  you  remark,  as  if  the  thought 
had  suddenly  struck  you,  '  I  'd  like  to  have  that  on  paper.' 
Then  you  can  get  it  from  him  easily  enough,  and  when  he 
leaves  out  whole  incidents,  as  he  is  sure  to  do,  you,  who  have 
just  heard  the  story,  can  put  him  right,  and  so  get  it  from  him 
nearly  in  its  entirety.  Still  it  is  not  always  easy  to  write  down 
these  stories,  for  they  are  full  of  old  or  corrupted  words,  which 
neither  you  nor  your  narrator  understands,  and  if  you  press 
him  too  much  over  the  meaning  of  these  he  gets  confused  and 
irritable." 

This  and  the  two  following  schedules  complete  the  set 
issued  by  the  Ethnographical  Survey  Committee. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL   INVESTIGATIONS  391 

"  Place Name  of  Observer 

"  PECULIARITIES  OF  DIALECT. 

"Directions  to  Collectors  of  Dialect  Tests. 

"  1.  Do  not,  if  it  can  be  helped,  let  your  informant  know  the 
nature  of  your  observations.  The  true  dialect  speaker  will  not 
speak  his  dialect  freely  or  truly  unless  he  is  unaware  that  his 
utterance  is  watched.  In  some  cases  persons  of  the  middle  class 
can  afford  correct  information,  and  there  is  less  risk  in  allowing 
them  to  know  your  purpose. 

"  2.  Observe  the  use  of  consonants.  Note,  for  example,  if 
v  and  z  are  used  where  the  standard  pronunciation  has  /  and  s. 
This  is  common  in  the  south. 

"  3.  Observe  very  carefully  the  nature  of  the  vowels.  This 
requires  practice  in  uttering  and  appreciating  vowel  sounds, 
some  knowledge  of  phonetics,  and  a  good  ear. 

"  4.  Record  all  observations  in  the  same  standard  phonetic 
alphabet,  viz.,  that  given  in  Sweet's  Primer  of  Phonetics.  A  few 
modifications  in  this  may  be  made,  viz.,  ng  for  Sweet's  symbol  for 
the  sound  of  ng  in  thing  ;  sh  for  his  symbol  for  the  sh  in  she  j  ch 
for  his  symbol  for  the  ch  in  choose  ;  th  for  the  th  in  thin  ;  dh  for 
the  th  in  then.  If  these  modifications  are  used,  say  so.  But  the 
symbol  j  must  only  be  used  for  the  y  in  you,  viz.,  as  in  German. 
If  the  sound  of/  in  just  is  meant,  Sweet's  symbol  should  be  used. 
On  the  whole  it  is  far  better  to  use  no  modifications  at  all. 
Sweet's  symbols  are  no  more  difficult  to  use  than  any  others  after 
a  very  brief  practice,  such  as  every  observer  of  phonetics  must 
necessarily  go  through. 

"  5.  If  you  find  that  you  are  unable  to  record  sounds  according 
to  the  above  scheme  it  is  better  to  make  no  return  at  all.  Incor- 
rect returns  are  misleading  in  the  highest  degree,  most  of  all  such 
as  are  recorded  in  the  ordinary  spelling  of  literary  English. 

"  6.  The  chief  vowel-sounds  to  be  tested  are  those  which  occur 
in  the  following  words  of  English  origin,  viz.,  man,  hard,  name, 
help,  meat  (spelled  with  ea),  green  (spelled  with  ee),  hill,  wine,  fire, 


392  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

soft,  hole,  oak  (spelled  with  oa),  cool,  sun,  house,  day,  law,  or  words 
involving  similar  sounds.  Also  words  of  French  origin,  such  as 
just,  master  (a  before  s),  grant  (a  before  n),  try,  value,  measure, 
bacon,  pay,  chair,  journey,  pity,  beef,  clear,  profit,  boil,  roast,  pork, 
false,  butcher,  fruit,  blue,  pure,  poor,  or  words  involving  similar 
sounds. 

"  The  best  accounts  of  these  sounds,  as  tested  for  a  Yorkshire 
dialect,  is  to  be  found  in  Wright's  Dialect  of  Windhill  (English 
Dialect  Society,  1892),  published  by  Kegan  Paul  at  12s.  6d. 
Sweet's  symbols  are  here  employed  throughout. 

"  Sweet's  Primer  of  Phonetics  is  published  by  the  Oxford  Press 
at  3.$-.  6d. 

"  A  list  of  text-words  (of  English  origin)  is  given  on  p.  42  of 
Skeat's  Primer  of  English  Etymology,  published  by  the  Oxford 
Press  at  is.  6d. 

"  f.  The  task  of  collecting  words  which  seem  to  be  peculiarly 
dialectal  (as  to  form  or  meaning,  or  both)  has  been  performed  so 
thoroughly  that  it  is  useless  to  record  what  has  been  often  already 
recorded.  See,  for  example,  Halliwell's  (or  Wright's)  Provincial 
Glossary,  and  the  publications  of  the  English  Dialect  Society. 
In  many  cases,  however,  the  pronunciation  of  such  words  has  not 
been  noted,  and  may  be  carefully  set  down  with  great  advantage. 

"  The  Rev.  Professor  Skeat  has  been  kind  enough  to  draw  up 
the  foregoing  directions,  and  the  collections  under  this  head  will 
be  submitted  to  him." 


Place Name  of  Observer , 


"MONUMENTS  AND  OTHER  REMAINS  OF  ANCIENT 
CULTURE. 

"  Plot  on  a  map,  describe,  furnish  photographs  or  sketches, 
and  state  the  measurements  and  names  (if  any)  of  these,  accord- 
ing to  the  following  classification  : 

"  Drift  implements.     Caves  and  their  contents. 

"  Stone  circles.     Monoliths.     Lake  dwellings. 

"  Camps.     Enclosures.     Collections  of  hut  circles. 


ETHNOGRAPHICAL  INVESTIGATIONS  393 

'•  Cromlechs.     Cairns.     Sepulchral  chambers. 

"  Barrows,  describing   the    form,   and   distinguishing   those 

which  have  not  been  opened. 
"  Inscribed  stones. 
"  Figured  stones.     Stone  crosses. 
"  Castra  (walled).     Earthen  camps. 
"  Foundations  of  Roman  buildings. 
11  Cemeteries  (what  modes  of  sepulture). 
"  Burials,  inhumation  or  cremation. 
"  Detailed  contents  of  graves. 
"  Types  of  fibulae  and  other  ornaments. 
"  Coins.     Implements  and  weapons,  stone,  bronze,  or  iron. 
"  Other  antiquities. 

"  A  list  of  place-names  within  the  area.     No  modern  names 
required. 
"  Special  note  should  be  made  of  British,  Roman,  and  Saxon 
interments  occurring  in  the  same  field,  and  other  signs  of  succes- 
sive occupation. 

"  Reference  should  be  made  to  the  article  ■  Archaeology '  in 
Notes  and  Queries  o?i  Anthropology,  p.  176. 

"  These  relate  to  England  only.  The  sub-committees  for  other 
parts  of  the  United  Kingdom  will  prepare  modified  lists. 

"  The  collections  under  this  head  will  be  digested  by  Mr. 
Payne." 

"  Place Name  of  Observer 

•«  HISTORICAL  EVIDENCE  AS  TO  THE  CONTINUITY  OF  RACE. 

"  Mention  any  historical  events  connected  with  the  place, 
especially  such  as  relate  to  early  settlements  in  it,  or  more  recent 
incursions  of  alien  immigrants. 

"  State  the  nature  of  the  pursuits  and  occupations  of  the  in- 
habitants. 

"  State  if  any  precautions  have  been  taken  by  the  people  to 
keep  themselves  by  themselves  ;  if  the  old  village  tenures  of  land 
have  been  preserved. 


394  THE   STUDY  OF  MAN 

a  Has  any  particular  form  of  religious  belief  been  maintained  ? 

"  Are  the  people  constitutionally  averse  to  change  ? 

"  What  are  the  dates  of  the  churches  and  monastic  or  other 
ancient  buildings  or  existing  remains  of  former  buildings  ? 

"  Do  existing  buildings  stand  on  the  sites  of  older  ones  ? 

"  How  far  back  can  particular  families  or  family  names  be 
traced  ? 

"  Can  any  evidence  of  this  be  obtained  from  the  manor  rolls  ; 
from  the  parish  registers  ;  from  the  tithingmen's  returns  ;  from 
guild  or  corporation  records  ? 

M  Are  particular  family  names  common  ? 

"  In  what  country  or  local  history  is  the  best  description  of 
the  place  to  be  found  ? 

"  Evidences  of  historical  continuity  of  customs,  dress,  dwell- 
ings, implements,  etc.,  should  be  noted. 

"  The  collections  under  this  head  will  be  digested  by  Mr. 
Brabrook." 


T 


APPENDIX  A 

HE  following  is  the  classification  of  anthropology  which 
has  been  proposed  by  Dr.  Brinton : 

THE   ANTHROPOLOGIC   SCIENCES. 

Proposed  Classification  atid  International  Nomenclature. 

ANTHROPOLOGY. 

I.  Somatology. — Physical      and      Experimental      Anthro- 
pology. 
II.  Ethnology. — Historic  and  Analytic  Anthropology. 

III.  Ethnography. — Geographic    and    Descriptive    Anthro- 

pology. 

IV.  Archeology. — Prehistoric  and  Reconstructive  Anthro- 

pology. 

I.    SOMATOLOGY. 

t.  Internal   Somatology. — Osteology,   craniology,   prosopology, 
myology,  splanchnology. 

2.  External  Somatology. — Anthropometry,  colour,  hair,  canons 

of  proportion,  physical  beauty. 

3.  Psychology. — Experimental    and  practical,    sensation,  rates 

of  nervous  impulse,  brain  and  nerve  action. 

4.  Develop?nental  and    Comparative  Somatology. — Embryology, 

heredity,  teratology,  human  biology,  evolution,  anatomy 
of    anthropoids,  ethnic  anatomy  and  physiology,  com- 
parative nosology  and  medical  geography,  fertility  and 
395 


396  THE   STUDY   OF  MAN 

sterility,  racial  pathology,  criminal  anthropology,  vital 
statistics,  anatomical  classification  of  races. 

II.    ETHNOLOGY. 

1.  Sociology. — Systems  of  government  and  the  social  contract, 

laws  and  ethical  standards,  the  marriage  relation  and 
rules  of  consanguinity  and  descent,  social  classes  and 
institutions,  international  relations  (war,  commerce, 
colonisation). 

2.  Technology. — The  utilitarian  arts,  as  tool  making,  ceramics, 

architecture,  agriculture,  means  of  transportation, 
clothing,  weights  and  measures,  media  of  exchange ; 
the  esthetic  arts — music,  drawing,  painting,  sculpture, 
decoration,  games,  cookery,  perfumery. 

3.  Religion. — Psychological    origin    and    development ;    per- 

sonal, family,  tribal,  and  world  religions ;  animism, 
fetichism,  polytheism,  monotheism,  atheism  ;  mythology 
and  mythogeny  ;  symbolism  and  religious  art ;  sacred 
places  and  objects  ;  rites,  ceremonies,  and  mortuary 
customs  ;  religious  teachers,  classes,  and  doctrines  ; 
theocracies  ;  analyses  of  special  religions  ;  philosophy 
and  natural  history  of  religions. 

4.  Linguistics. — Gesture  and  sign  language  ;  spoken  language, 

parts  of  speech,  logic  of  grammar,  origin,  growth,  and 
classification  of  languages,  relation  to  ethnography  ; 
written  language,  pictographic,  symbolic,  ideographic, 
and  phonetic  writing,  evolution  of  alphabets,  phonetic 
systems  ;  forms  of  expression,  poetic  (metrical,  rhyth- 
mical), dramatic,  prosaic. 

5.  Folk-lore. — Traditional  customs  and  narratives,  folk-sayingSy 

superstitious  beliefs  and  practices. 

III.    ETHNOGRAPHY. 

i.  General  Ethnography. — Origin,  characteristics,  and  sub- 
divisions of  races  and  peoples.  The  '  geographical 
provinces  '   or   '  areas  of    characterisation.'     Anthropo- 


APPENDIX  A 


397 


geography.  Lines  of  migrations  and  national  inter- 
course. 
2.  Special  Ethnography. — The  Eurafrican  or  white  race 
(North  Mediterranean  and  South  Mediterranean 
branches)  ;  the  Austafrican  or  black  race  ;  the  Asian 
race  (Sinitic  and  Sibiric  branches)  ;  the  American  race  ; 
Insular  and  Littoral  peoples  (Nigritic,  Malayic,  and 
Australic  stocks). 

IV.    ARCHEOLOGY. 

I.   General    Archceology. — Geology    of    the     epoch    of    man. 
Glacial   phenomena.       Diluvial    and    alluvial    deposits. 
Physical    geography    of    the    quaternary.     Prehistoric 
botany    and    zoology.     Prehistoric    Ages — the    Age    of 
Stone   (palaeolithic  period,  neolithic  period)  ;  the  Age 
of   Bronze;    the  Age  of  Iron-;    prehistoric  commerce; 
palethnology  ;  proto-historic  epoch. 
■2.   Special  Archozology. — Egyptian,  Assyrian,  Phenician,  classi- 
cal, medieval,  and  American  archaeology. 
The   urgent  need   of  a  uniform  classification  and  nomencla- 
ture for  the  various  sciences  connected  with  the  study  of  man 
must  be  apparent  to  all  who  are  familiar  with  the  current  litera- 
ture of  anthropology. 

The  plan  proposed  above  is  based  upon  the  works  and  sug- 
gestions of  well-known  English,  French,  German,  Italian,  and 
American  writers.  The  proposer  claims  no  other  credit  than  that 
of  selection.  He  offers  no  neologisms.  The  leading  terms, 
those  printed  in  italics  and  capitals,  are  substantially  the  same  in 
all  the  languages  named  ;  they  are  already  domesticated  in  the 
anthropological  writings  of  every  country,  and  all  that  is  needed 
is  a  general  agreement  as  to  their  connotation. 

In  order  that  this  may  be  brought  about,  the  writer  respect- 
fully submits  the  above  to  those  interested  in  the  study  of  this 

science. 

D.  G.  Brinton,  M.D,  LL.D., 

Professor  of  Ethnology  at  the  Academy  of  Natural  Sciences, 
Philadelphia,  Pa.,  U.S.A. 


APPENDIX  B 

METRICAL    MEASUREMENTS   AND    THEIR   EQUIVALENTS   IN 
INCHES  AND  HALF-INCHES. 


mm.   inches. 

mm.   inches. 

mm.    inches. 

mm.    inches. 

6=   i 

495  =  19* 

IOO4  =  39^ 

1512  =  59i 

13=  I 

508  ss  20 

IOI6  =  40 

1524  =  60 

19=   1 

521  =  20£ 

1029  =  4o£ 

1537  =  6o| 

25  =  1 

534  =  21 

1042  =  41 

1550  =  61 

38=  i| 

546  SB  2\\ 

1055  SB  4ll 

1562  =  6i£ 

51  =  2 

559  =  22 

IO67  SB  42 

1575  =  62 

64  S3  2\ 

571  =  22^ 

I080  s=  42^ 

1588  =  62^- 

76  =   3 

584  =  23 

1093  =  43 

1601  =  63 

89=  3* 

597  =  23$ 

1 105  =  43i 

1613  =  63^ 

101  =  4 

610  =  24 

in8  =  44 

1626  SB  64 

114  =  \\ 

622  =  24^ 

1131  =s  441 

1639  s=  641- 

127  =  5 

635  =  25 

1 144  =  45 

1651  =s  65 

140  =  54 

648  SB  25£ 

1156  =  451 

I664  =B  65^ 

152  =  6 

661  =  26 

1169  =  46 

1677  =  66 

165  =  6£ 

673  =  26£ 

1181  =  46^ 

1690  =  66£ 

178  =  7 

686  bs  27 

1194  ss  47 

1702  =  67 

190=  7| 

699  SB  27^ 

1207  BS  47I 

1715  =  67^ 

203  =  8 

711  =  28 

I220  =  48 

1728  ~   68 

216=  8£ 

724  ss  28£ 

1232  =  48^ 

1740  =  68£ 

228  =  9 

737  =  29 

1245  =  49 

1753  =  69 

241  =  9i 

750  =  29^ 

1258  =  49^ 

1766  =  69^ 

254  =  10 

762  =  30 

1270  =  50 

1778  =  70 

267  =  io£ 

775  =  3©£ 

1283  ss  5o£ 

1791  =  7o£ 

279  =  11 

788  =  31 

1296  s=  51 

1804  =  71 

292  —  \\\ 

800  ss  3i£ 

1309  =  51^ 

1817  =  7ii 

305  =  12 

813  =  32 

1321  SB  52 

1829  =  72 

318  =  I2£ 

826  ss  32^ 

1334  =  52^ 

1842  =  72^ 

330  =  13 

838  =  33 

1347  =  53 

1855  =  73 

343  =  I3i 

851  =  33i 

1359  =  53i 

1867  =  73£ 

356  =  14 

864  =  34 

1372  ss  54 

1880  =  74 

368  =  14^ 

877  =  34i 

1385  =  54i 

1893  =  74£ 

381  =  15 

889  =  35 

1397  =  55 

1905  =  75 

394  =  I5i 

902  =  35£ 

1410  =  55£ 

1918  =  75£ 

406  =  16 

915  =  36 

1423  =  56 

193 1  =  76 

419  =  i6£ 

927  ss  36^ 

I436  =:   56^ 

1943  sb  76^ 

432  =  17 

940  bs  27 

1448  =  57 

I956  B=  77 

444  =  17^ 

953  =  yi\ 

1461  =  57^ 

1969  =  77^ 

457  =  18 

966  =  38 

1474  =  58 

1981  =s  78 

470  =  i8£ 

978  =  38£ 

i486  =  58£ 

1994  =  78£ 

482  =  19 

991  =  39 

1499  =  59 

2000  =  78f 

INDEX 


Aberdeen,  222,  336 

Aberdeenshire,  222,  309 

Adamnan,  281 

Adler,  Dr.  Hermann,  19 

Africa,  211,  229,  252,  254,  308,  319 

—  Central,  317 

—  cranial  index  of  various  peoples,  55 

—  West,  224 
Ainus,  55,  56,  59 
Alans  or  Alani,  46 
Alleluia,  203 
Allen,  Mr.  Grant,  36 
Altitudinal  index,  53 
Amazon,  234 

America,  211,  231,  252,  254,  319 

—  cranial  index  of  various  peoples,  55 

—  North,  215,  225,  231 

—  North- West,  211 
American  Indians,  59 

—  Indian  race,  77 

—  races,  78 
Americans,  96 
Ammon,  Dr.  Otto,  363 
Amorites,  14,  21,  22 

Analysis,     anthropological      measure- 
ments as  a  means  of,  10 
Ancient  Egyptians,  coarse  type,  98 

—  fine  type,  98 

—  nasal  index  of,  98 
Andamanese,  57,  59,  60,  97 
Andree,  Dr.  R.,  205,  211 
Angle  of  Cuvier,  93 
Angles,  34 

Anglians,  33,  36,  40 
Anglo-Saxon  invasion,  66 
Anthropology,  395 

Anthropometrical  Laboratory  in  Cam- 
bridge, 7 
Anthropometry,  354-359 


Antrim,  County,  223 

Apache,  231-233 

Apertura  pyriformis,  95,  103,  104 

Apes,  103 

Aquitainians,  111 

Arab  conquest,  99 

Arabia,  204 

Arabs,  14,  17,  127,  177 

Aramaeans,  19 

Aran,  335 

Aranzadi,     Prof.   Telesforo  de,    148- 

151 
Archaeology,  395-397 
Archibald,  E.  D.,  185 
Argyle,  28 
Arizona,  231,  232 
Armenians,  17,  20,  21 
Arrows,  174,  177 
Aryan  race,  81-84 
Aryans,  90,  157,  215,  317 

—  in  India,  56 
Asia,  308,  319 

—  cranial   index  of  various   peoples, 

55 

—  Minor,  204 
Assyria,  135 
Assyrians,  20 

—  high  type,  17  ;  low  type,  17 

—  pictures,  142 
Auchencairn,  266,  331 
Austen,  H.  Godwin,  212 
Australia,  237,  244,  252,  317,  325 

—  Central,  210,  213,  249 
Australians,  56,  59,  105,  183 
Austria,  hair  and  eye  colour  of  child- 
ren in,  43 

Auvergnats,  121 
Auvergne,  23,  44 
Azores,  144 


399 


400 


INDEX 


Babylonian  type,  17 
Badagas,  86,  87,  92 
Baden-Powell,  Captain,  187 
Bailey,  J.,  324 
Bakairi,  234,  235 
Balfour,  Mrs.  M.  C,  387 

—  Right  Hon.  A.  J.,  167 
Balham,  219 

Ball  games,  174,  175 
Balz,  Dr.,  80 
Banffshire,  31 1 
Banim,  Miss  Mary,  295 
Banks  Islands,  194,  238,  252 
Barley  Break,  262 
Barnes,  Rev.  J.  P.,  223 
Barrington,  276,  329 
Barrow,  Mr.,  163 
Basel,  226,  260 
Basque,  157 

—  wheel,  148 
Bastian,  Dr.  A.,  206 
Batavi,  33 
Batavians,  66 

Batty,  Mrs.  R.  Braithwaite,  229 
Baumes-Chaudes,  63 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  203 
Becq  de  Fouquieres,  M.  L.,  212 
Beddoe,  Dr.  John,  12-48,63-68,  351, 

369 
Bede,  303 
Bedfordshire,  220 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  32 
Bedouins,  19 

Belfast,  225,  226,  289,  292,  339 
Belgium,  hair  and  eye  colour  of  child- 
ren in,  43 
Belper,  292 
Bengal,  80,  88,  91 
Berbers,  97,  99,  100,  123 
Berkshire,  278,  279 
Bernoni,  Sig.,  337 
Bertillon,  M.  A.,  2,  4,  75 
Bertin,  G.,  17,  18 

Bianconi,  Mr.  Charles,  166-169,  173 
Bilia,  239 

Black  races,  58,  78,  81,  96,  104 
Black  spot,  the  Limousin,  115,  117 
Blackstone,  Sir  W.,  203 
Block-wheel  car,  169 
Blue  eyes,  22 

Blue  Hill  Observatory,  186 
Boas,  Dr.  F.,  216,  362 
Bocking,  318,  320 


Bondin,  M.,  115,  117 
Boomers,  224 
Bora,  246,  249 
Borneo,  180,  208,  282 
Bororo,  234,  235 
Borreby,  64 

—  race,  33 
Borrowdale,  141 

Boston,  hair  and  eye  colour,  31 
Bourke,  J.  G.,  231,  232 
Box-kite,    186 
Boyd-Dawkins,  Prof.,  64 
Brabrook,  E.,  394 
Brachycephalic  skull,  54 
Brachycephals,  19,  20 

—  neolithic,  65 
Brahmans,  81,  83-89 
Braintree,  36 
Brandon,  36,  37 
Brazil,  233,  236,  317 
Bremen,  66 

Bridge  of  Adana,  280 

—  Stoicheion  of  the,  279 
Brinton,  Dr.  D.  G.,  51,  397 
British,  38 

—  Islands,  219 

—  types,  38 
Britton,  Mr.,  179 

Broca,  Prof.  P.,  94,  96,  99-101,   115, 

117,  121 
Bronze  Age,    40,    67,  146,    152,  156 

—  cranial  index,  66 

—  men,  33 

—  nasal  and  cranial  index  of,  101 
Browne,  Dr.  C.  R.,  295,  350,  353 
Brunn,  Dr.,  148 
Buckinghamshire,  28,  316 
Bugeaud,  Marshall,  127 

Bullar,  Mr.,  144 

Bull-roarer,  219-258 

Bummer,  220,  223,  225 

Burmah,  206 

Burne,  Miss  C.  S.,  291,  292,  381-387 

Burt,  Captain,  137-139 

Bush,  J.,  159,  160,  164 

Bushmen,  98,  228,  230,  252,  254,  258 

Buzz,  225 

Buzzer,  220 

Bzik,  227 

Cab,  172,  173 
Cadurci,  in 
Caernarvonshire,  298 


INDEX 


401 


Caesar,  no 
Calcutta,  282 

Cambridge,  50,  220,  268,  270,  276, 
291, 318,  329,  339 

—  anthropometry,  7 
Cambridgeshire,  34,  220,  315 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  32 
Camping-ground,  175 
Canstadt,  149 

Cantabrian-Austurian  wheel,  123 
Car,  130 

—  block-wheel,  169 

—  low-back,  140,  160 

—  Ringsend,  172,  173 

—  slide,  133 

Card   for  hair  and  eye  statistics,  24, 

Cards,  playing,  177 
Caribs,  236,  317 
Carr,  Sir  John,  162 
Cart,  evolution  of,  128 

—  Portuguese,  134 
Caste,  82,  85 

—  significance  of,  85 
Cat's  cradle,  178-184 
Celtse,  in 

—  of  Caesar,  121 
Celtic  chariot,  143,  154 

—  language,  37 

Celts,  33,  34,  39,  40,  in,  121,  143, 
152,  154,  156,  177,  299-301 

—  nasal  index,  94 
Central  Provinces,  88 

Cephalic  index  in  Dordogne  district, 
107-112 

Ceremonial  tablets,  241 

Chalmers,  Rev.  J.,  240,  241,  301 

Charente,  126,  127 

Charente-Inferieure,  46 

Chariots,  two- wheeled,  137 

Chariot  wheels,  Greek,  147 

Children,  174  * 

China,  55,  150,  177,  188,  192,  193, 
205,  206,  216,  225 

Chinese,  199 

Chipiez,  M.,  142 

Clapham,  Dr.,  34 

Clarke,  Sir  E.,  260,  328 

Classification,  anthropological  meas- 
urements as  a  means  of,  10 

Classification  of  anthropology,  395 

Clayton,  Mr.,  186 

Clercq,  F.  S.  A.  de,  209 


Clog-wheels,  141 

Clonmell,  166 

Codrington,  Dr.  R.  H.,  182,  194,  209, 

237-239 
Collignon,   Dr.    R.,  46,    71,    76,    94, 
106-127,  363,  364,  366 

—  colour  index,  26 
Colour-blindness,  7 

Colour   of  hair  and  eyes  in   Dordogne 

district,  111-115 
Colour-scales,  23 
Columkille,  281,  304 
Concave  nose,  71 
Connaught,  28 
Continuity  of  race,  393,  394 
Contredanse,  266 
Convex  nose,  71 
Conze,  Prof.,  148 
Coranied,  33 
Coritavi,  or  Coritani,  33 
Cork,  22,  166 
Cornwall,  28 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  32,  37,  38 
Correze,  109-127 

Courting  games,  313-328 
Cowen,  Mr.,  139 
Cowper,  H.  S.,  145 
Cox,  Miss  Marian  R.,  377 
Cranial  index,  53 

—  indices,  67 

—  indices  of  Europeans,  61 

—  nasal  index,  95 

table  of,  96 

Cranium,  48-50 
Cratch  cradle,  179 
Crawley,  A.  E.,  256 
Crespigny,  Lieut,  de,  180 
Creuse,  106,  127 
Criminals,  identification  of,  1 
Croatia,  325 

Croker,  T.  Crofton,  1 38-141,  343 

Cro-Magnon,  123,  124 

Crowe,  J.  O'Beirne,  I53-I55 

Cu  Chulaind,  153-155 

Culin,    Mr.    Stewart,    179,    189,    190, 

192,  205,  217,  225 
Curr,  Mr.,  317 
Curves  of  relative  brain  capacity   at 

Cambridge  University,  9 
Cushing,  F.  H.,  233 
Cuvier,  angle  of,  93 
Cymotrichi,  59 
Cyprian  wheels,  142 


402 


INDEX 


Dalton,  Colonel  E.   T.,  go,  91,  324, 

326 
D'Alviella,  Count  Goblet,  256 
Dancing,  259 
Danes,  34,  40 
Danish  invaders,  68 

—  settlements,  37 

—  type,  31 
Dartmouth,  37 
Dasyus,  82,  83 
Davis,  Barnard,  38 
Denbighshire,  294 
Derby,  33 

Derbyshire,  220,  221,  290,  292 
Derrick,  Mr.,  166 
Derry,  County,  296 
Devonshire,  37 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  32 
Dialect,  391 

Dieffenbach,  Dr.  E.,  181,  195,  209 

Dillaye,  F.,  188,  194,  204,  212 

Dionysiac  mysteries,  227 

"  Dish-a-loof,"  342 

Dolichocephalic  skull,  54 

Dominoes,  177 

Donegal,  County,  141,  156 

Dordogne,   106-127 

Dorset,  28 

Down,  County,  141,  157,  221,  224,  332 

Dravidians,  82-84,  87,  90,  215 

"  Draw  a  Pail  of  Water,"  298-312 

Drew,  Thos.,  225 

Dublin,  139,  156,  161,  162,  275 

Dubois,  E.,  163 

Dumfriesshire,  298 

Dundonald,  157 

Duruy,  Prof. ,  146 

Dyak,  180,  208 

East  Anglia,  36 

East  Anglians,  37,  220 

—  craniology,  37 

Effect  of  jaw  muscles  on  skull,  48,  49 
Efficiency,    anthropological   measure- 
ments as  a  test  of,  6 
Egypt,  125,  135 

—  representations  of,  17 
Egyptian,  134 

—  art,  leading  characteristics  of,  15 

—  complexion,  13 

—  hair,  13 

—  high  type,  79  ;  low  type,  79 

—  type,  13 


Egyptians,  ancient,  79 

—  nasal  and  cranial  index  of,  134 
Ehrenreich,  Dr.  Paul,  235 
Eleusinian  mysteries,  256 
Ellice  Group,  208 

Ellis,  Rev.  W.,  195 
England,  174 

—  hair  colour,  28  ;  eye  colour,  28 
English,  92,  125,  320 
Englishmen,  mean  cephalic  index  of, 

6S 
Eramo,  240 
Erasmus,  328 
Erect  attitude,  47 
Erythrism,  21 
Eskimo,  97,  184,  211,  216,  231,  254 

—  nose,  76,  77 

Essex,  36,  219,  318,  320 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  32 
Etheridge,  R.,  210,  250 
Ethnography,  395-397 

—  of  Dordogne  district,  106-127 
Ethnology,  395 

Europe,  252,  307 

—  cranial   index   of  various  peoples, 

55 
Europeans,  104 
External  soul,  191,  200,  311 
Eye  colours,  24,  351-354 
Eyre,  E.  J.,  183 

Face,  47 

Faction  fights,  216 

Fairies,  335 

Falciform  fold,  58 

"  Farmer's  Den,"  265-268 

Fauriel,  M.,  271 

Fellah,  125 

Fellahin,  13 

Fielde,  Miss,  180 

Figura,  F.,  226,  258 

Fiji,  195 

Find-abair,  153 

Finns,  16,  317,  320 

Finsch,  Dr.  O.,  239 

Fison,  Rev.  Lorimer,  219,  244 

Fitzstephen,  282 

Flinders  Petrie,  "  New  Race,"  15 

Flores,  206 

Florida,  182,  237,  238 

Flower,  Sir  William,  16,   58-61,  96, 

365,  368 
Fly  River,  241 


INDEX 


403 


Folk-lore,  375-39°,  39° 
Forbes,  Dr.  H.  O.,  206 
Forma  anthropina,  103,  104 

—  infantilis,  104 

Fossae  prenasales,  104,  105 
Foundation  sacrifice,  275-287 
Four  races,  representation  of,  in  an- 
cient Egypt,  13 
France,  227,  284 

—  Central,  274 

—  nasal  and  cranial  index  of  ancient 

and  modern,  101 
Franklin,  185 
Franks,  124 
Frazer,    Dr.    J.    G.,    200,    256,    311, 

341 

—  Mrs.  J.  G.,  260,  264 
French,  40 

—  nasal  indices,  94 
Friedberg,  E.,  320 
Friesland,  352 
Frisian,  66 

—  settlements,  37 
Frisians,  31,  40 
Funeral  games,  329 
Furfooz,  64 

Gadow,  Dr.  Hans,  151 

Gaelic,  37 

Gaidoz,  M.,  309 

Galicia,  226,  227 

Galley  Hill,  63 

Galton,  Dr.  Francis,  4,  6-9,  50,  374 

Galway,  North,  346 

—  West,  345 
Games,  174 

—  courting,  313-328 

—  kissing,  327 

—  wake,  343 

Garland-dressing,  290,  299 
Garnett,  Miss  Lucy  M.  J.,  59,  281 
Garson,  Dr.,  2,  66,  365 

Gason,  S.,  249 
Gastaldi,  B.,  146 
Gauls,  40,  124,  127,  170 

—  nasal  and  cranial  index  of,  10 1 
Gempei,  216 

"  Georgina,"  331,  332 
Gerhard,  Dr.,  145 
Germans,  33,  40,  92 
Germany,  224,  282,  320 

—  hair  and  eye  colour  of  children  in, 

43 


Gerson  da  Cunha,  Dr.,  82 

Gildemeister,  66 

Gill,  Rev.  Dr.   W.  Wyatt,  181,   196, 

198,  199 
Girton,  270,  291 
Gloucester,  65 
Gloucestershire,  28 
Glover,  Mr.,  292 
Goethe,  18 
Gomme,  Mrs.  A.   B.,   178,   222,   223, 

258,  278,  282, 287, 289, 316,  337- 

340,  343 

—  G.  L.,  39,  138,  215,  2S2,  290,  294, 

295,  297-299,  300,  305,  311,  340, 

342,  375,  376 
Gope,  241 
Goths,  21 

Gottweiger,  Situla,  143 
"  Grave-row,"  68 
Gray,  W.,  297,  302,  303 
Greece,  227,  297 

—  ancient,  252,  318 
Greek  mysteries,  258 

—  or  classical  nose,  74 

—  songs,  279 
Greeks,  157,  258 

"  Green  Gravel,"  338-341 

Gregor,  Rev.  Dr.  W.,  222,  223 

Gregory,  Pope,  303 

Grosse,  264 

Grove,  Mrs.  Lily,  260,  264 

Guanches,  100 


Haddon,   A.    C.,    97,    183,   239-242, 

244,  295,  301,  350,  353 
Hahn,  Dr.  E.,  135-137 
Hair,  58 
Hair  and  eye  colours  of  children  in 

Austria,  43 

—  Belgium,  43 

—  Germany,  43 

—  Switzerland,  43 

Hair  colour,  12,  24,  351,  353 
Hair  of  Americans,  59 

—  Caucasians,  58 

—  Mongolians,  59 

—  Negroid  peoples,  59 

Hall,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  S.  C,  162,  164- 

166 
Hallivvell,  288,  289,  392 
Hallstadt  race,  122,  143 
Hamilton,  J.,  156 


404 


INDEX 


Hampshire,  215,  277,  334 

Hamy,  E.  T.,  99,  125,  365 

Hardman,  E.  T.,  250 

Hargrave,  185 

Harrison,  Miss  Jane,  145 

—  Mr.  Park,  33,  36 

Hartland,  E.  Sydney,  200,  299,  307, 
309,  310,  354,  376 

Hatshepu,  Queen,  14 

Haute-Vienne,  106-127 

Hayden,  Miss  M.,  345 

Head,  B.  V.,  146 

Head-form  in  anthropology,  47 

Head  measurements,  360-366 

Head  of  Zeus,  74 

"  Heaven  and  Hell,"  284 

Hedley,  C,  208 

Height  indices  of  the  cranium  in  Dor- 
dogne  district,  119-121 

"  Hell,"  262,  263 

Henderson,  W.,  290,  294,  342 

Hera,  155 

Herbette,  M.,  2 

Hereford,  382 

Herts,  28 

Hervey  Islands,  181,  195,  199 

Hewitt,  J.  F.,  91 

Hey  wood,  Thos.,  260 

High-bridged  nose,  71 

Highlands,  281 

Hissarlik,  136 

Historical  evidence,  393 

Hittites,  20,  21 

Hobson,  Mrs.  Carey,  231 

Hohberg,  66 

Holy  well,  291 

Holywood,  332 

rHomme-mort,  63 

Hone,  W.,  162,  202,  203 

Hope,  R.  C,  292,  293 

Horton-Smith,  R.  J.,  37 

Hovorka,  Dr.,  73,  74,  103-105 

Howitt,  A.  W.,  246-248,  317 

Human  beast  of  burden,  129 

Hummer,  219 

Humming-top,  202,  205,  208,  211, 
213 

Huntingdonshire,  hair  and  eye  col- 
our, 32 

Huxley,  Prof.  T.  H.,  48 

Hyde,  Dr.  Douglas,  388,  389 

Hyksos,  15,  16,  126 

Hypenetian,  58 


Iberian,  38,  39,  124 
Iceni,  36 

Index  of  nigrescence,  24 
India,  56,  57,  193,  324,  325 

—  nasal  index,  81 

—  Southern,  92,  342 
Indo-Polynesians,  96 
Inglis,  H.  D.,  163 
Inishbofin,  129 
Inishshark,  129 

Initiation    ceremonies    in    Australia, 

246-251 
Inverness,  138,  139 
Ireland,  129,  131,  132,  134,  152,  159, 

162,  224,  295,  341,  343,  344,  346, 

388 

—  eye  colour,  28 

—  hair  colour,  28 
Irish,  31,  326 
Isle  of  Wight,  290 

Jacobs,  Joseph,  18,  21 

Jamieson,  223,  340 

Japan,  55,   179,  180,    188,   192,  200, 

205,  206,  211,  225 
Japanese,  57,  80 

—  coarse  type,  80 

—  fine  type,  80 
Jaunting-car,  159-173 
Java,  194,  206,  212,  237 
Jaw,  human,  47-49 

—  muscles,  30 
"Jenny Jones,"  329-339 
Jewish  nose,  20,  71,  73 

—  type,  persistency  of,  18 
Jews,  14,  17,  21,  320 

—  Ashkenazim,  18,  21 

—  blond  type,  19 

—  comparative    infertility   of    mixed 

marriages,  18 

—  dark  type,  18 

—  German-Polish,  18,  21 

—  high  type,  17 

—  low  type,  18 

—  red  hair,  21 

—  Sephardim,  21 

—  Spanish,  21 
Jingle,  172,  173 
Jutes,  46 

Kaffir,  231,  252 
Kafirs,  90 
Kalmuk,  58 


INDEX 


405 


Kalmuk's  skull,  after  Ranke,  52 

Kemping,  175 

Kent,  278 

Kerry,  341 

Kevin's,  St.,  Well,  295 

Kincardineshire,  222 

Kintail,  133 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  124 

Kirkcudbrightshire,  266,  331 

Kirkmichael,  311 

Kissing  games,  327,  32S 

Kites,  184-201 

—  Chinese,  189 

—  fighting,  193 

—  in  meteorology,  185 

—  in  Japan,  190 

—  in  Solomon  Islands,  1S9 

—  Korean,  189,  190 

"  Knights  from  Spain,"  320,  326 

Kohl,  J.  G.,  211 

Koitapu,  301 

Kolarians,  90,  91 

Kolhs,  91 

Konos,  228 

Kopts,  100 

Korea,  177,  179,  180,   189,  190,  200, 

205,  216-218 
Kotas,  86,  87,  9^  92 
Krause,  E.,  239 
Kurnai,  248 
Kymri,  124,  364 

—  nasal  index,  94 

"Lady  on  a  Mountain,"  327 

Lancashire,  290,  293 

Lang,  Andrew,  227,  231,  237,  252 

Lapland,  57 

Lapps,  317 

Late  Celtic,  cranial  index,  67 

La  Tene,  143 

Laverock,  W.  S.,222 

Lawrence,  Mrs.,  270,  291 

Leicester,  33,  34,  65 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  35 
Leicestershire,    hair  and    eye  colour, 

32 
Leiotrichi,  59 
Lemovices,  no,  in 
Lepers'  Island,  182,  194 
Leptorhine,  75,  96 
Life-token,  191,  200 
Lincoln,  31,  33 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  35 


Lincolnshire,  31,  220,  387 
— hair  and  eye  colour,  32 
Linguistics,  396 
Livi,  Dr.,  362 
London, 316 

"  London  Bridge,"  275-287 
Long  Barrows,  63 
Long  Barrow  type,  36 
"  Lords  from  Spain,"  320-326 
Low-back  car,  160,  161 
Lucian,  228 
Ludlow,  214 
"  Lump  of  Sugar,"  291 
Luschan,  Dr.  Felix  von,  19,  21 
Lyall,  Sir  A.,  84,  88 

Macalister,  Prof.  A.,  105,  365 

Macdonald,  Rev.,  317 

Mackintosh,  Mr.  D.,  31 

Madras,  85,  92 

Mahr,  319 

"  Maiden's  Dance,"  337 

Malasia,  206 

Malay,  194,  206-208,  213,  252 

—  Archipelago,  212,  237,  326 

—  States,  236 
Malays,  103,  194 
Malton,  J.,  139 
Mangaia,  196,  198 
Mantegazza,  Prof.  P.,  362 
Maories,  213-237 

—  distribution  of   colour   of    eyes   in 

France  (Topinard),  43 

—  distribution   of   colour   of   hair   in 

France  (Topinard),  44 

—  distribution  of  dark  eyes  in  Eng- 

land (Beddoe),  29 

—  distribution     of     excess     of     pure 

blond  over  pure  dark  type  in  Eng- 
land (Beddoe),  30 

—  distribution  of  hair  and  eye  colours 

in  England,  27-30 

—  index   of  nigrescence  in    England 

(Beddoe)  27-29 
Marindin,  G.  E.,  143 
Mariner's  compass,  199 
Markham,  C.  R.,  236 
Marriage  by  capture,  317 

—  by  purchase,  319-322 
Martial,  69 

Martin,  Mr.,  298 
Martius,  Dr.  von,  317 
Marvin,  Prof.  C.  F.,  185 


406 


INDEX 


Maspero,  G.,  13,  79 

Masseter  muscles,  48,  49 

Matthews,  R.  H.,246,  249,  251 

Matthews,  Dr.  Washington,  232 

May-day,  315,  316 

Mayo,  346 

McAdie,  A.,  185 

McLennan,  J.  F.,  81 

Mean  cephalic  index  of  Englishmen,  6S 

Measurement  of  eyesight,  7 

Measurements,  metrical,  398 

—  nasal,  365-370 
Mediterranean,  56 

—  nasal  index,  94 

—  race,  15,  21,  39,  122,  124,  157,  364 
Melanesians,  78,  213,  237 
Melanochroi,  56,  59 

Mer,  Murray  Island,  207,  209 
Merovingian  skulls,  102 
Mesaticephalic  skull,  54 
Mesopic,  88 
Mesorhine,  75,  76,  96 
Meteorology,  kites  in,  185 
Metrical  measurements,  398 
Michaelis,  J.  D.,  320 
Middle  Ages,  68 

—  cranial  index,  67 
Mies,  Dr.,  362 
Mincopies,  57 
Mitchell,  Sir  A.,  131,  132 
Mohar,  319 
Mongolian,  58 

—  type,  58-60 
Mongoloid  race,  91 
Monkeys,  noses  of,  69 
Monseur,  M.,  309 
Montgomeryshire,  221,  222,  385 
Monuments,  392 

Moor,  179 

Moore,  Prof.  Willis  L.,  1S5 

Morality,  306 

Mortillet,  Prof.  G.  de,  40 

Mota,  238 

Mothering  Sunday,  383 

Motu,  182,  301 

Motu-Motu,  240 

Muhammadans,  86,  92,  93 

Murdoch,  J.,  211,  225 

Murray  Island,  207,  209,  212 

Myers,  Dr.  C.  S.,  36,  66 

Mykenaean  cars,  148 

—  period,  146 
Myres,  J.  L.,  145 


Mysteries,  256 

—  Dionysiac,  227 

—  Greek,  258 
Mystery,  228,  229 

Naga  Hills,  212 
Nagas,  341 
Nahuquas,  236 
Napier,  341 
Nares,  R.,  179,  203 
Nasal  bones,  95,  102 

—  and  cranial  index  of  ancient   and 

modern  France,  98,  101 

—  and   cranial  index   of    Egyptians, 

100 

—  and  cranial  index  of  Parisians,  101 

—  index,  India,  81 

—  index  of  ancient  Egyptians,  98 

—  index  in  Dordogne  district,  118 

—  index  of  the  living,  75,  77 

—  indices,  French,  94 

—  indices  of  Southern  India,  86 

—  measurements,  366-369 
Nasalis  larvatus,  70 
Naso-malar  index,  368 
Nature,  goddess  of,  171 
Neanderthal,  63 
Negrilloes,  59 
Negritoes,  57,  58 

Negroes,  13-15,  78,  103,  104,  364 
Nehring,  Dr.  A.,  49 
Neolithic,  36,  39,  123,  124 

—  brachycephals,  65 

—  cranial  index,  66 

—  nasal  index,  101 

—  type,  64 
Neolithic  Age,  63 
Neubauer,  Dr.  A.,  18 

Newell,  W.  W.,  175,  263,  264,  269- 

273,  283,  286,  287,  337 
New  Guinea,  97,  174,  182,  237,  239, 

240,  252,  301 
New  Hebrides,  194 
"  New  Race,"  Flinders  Petrie,  15 
New  Zealand,  181, 184,  195,  209,  213, 

237,252 
Nilgiri  Hills,  85,  91,  93 
"  Noddy,"  172,  173 
Norfolk,  36,  220,  221 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  32 
Norseman,  40 

Northampton,  hair  and  eye  colour,  35 
Northamptonshire,  33,  34 


INDEX 


407 


Northamptonshire  hair  and  eye  colour, 

32 
Northumberland,  64,  292,  293 
North  Wales,  64 

North-Western  Provinces,  81,  90,  215 
Nose,  69-105 

—  concave,  71 

—  convex,  71 

—  high-bridged,  71 

—  Jewish,  71 

—  Papuan,  71 

—  Roman,  69 

—  sinuous,  71 

—  snub,  69 

—  straight,  71 
Noses  of  monkeys,  69 
Nottingham,  31-34,  215 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  35 
Nottinghamshire,  hair  and  eye  colour, 

32 
Nubia,  98 
"  Nuts  in  May,"  313-316 

"  Oats,  Beans,  and  Barley."  270-272 
Oceania,  198,  200,  208,  237 

—  cranial  index  of  various  peoples,  55 
O'Curry,  E.,  132,  154 
Orang-utan,  103 

Orion's  Belt,  197 

Oro-stick,  224,  229 

Orpen,  Mr.,  229 

Orthognathous,  49 

Owen,  Rev.  Elias,  223,  342,  385 

Ox-carts,  151 

Ox-waggon,   137 

Pack  animal,  129 
Palaeolithic  man,  39,  63,  123 

—  nasal  index,  100,  101 
Palgrave,  204 
Palmer,  E.,  251 
Paniyans,  92,  86,  87,  89 
Panjab,  88,  90 
Papuan  nose,  71 
Papuans,  97,  210,  212 
Parakite,  188 

Pariahs,  84,  86,  87-89,  92 
Paris,  203 
Parish  top,  203 
Parisians,  23 

—  nasal  and  cranial  index  of,  101 
Pastoral  kings,  142 

Pattern,  303 


Patterson,    Miss  Clara  M.,  321,  332, 
339 

—  W.  H.,  289 
Payne,  393 

Peg-top,  202,  208,  212 
Penka,  Karl,  90 
Penpont,  298 
Perrot,  M.,  142 
Persistence  of  type,  61 
Peruvians.  236 
Petrie,  Flinders,  99 
Petrocorii,  no,  in 
Phillips,  Prof.,  31,  34 
Phoenicians,  14,  18,  19 
Photography,  372-375 
Physical  characters,  13 
Pima,  233 

Pineau,  Prof.  L.,  283 

Pin-offerings,  290,  299 

Pin-wells,  293 

Pipes,  346 

Pitcairn  Island,  209 

Pitt-Rivers,  General,  66,  300 

Platyopic,  88 

Platyrhine,  75,  76,  96 

Plaustrum,  143 

Playing  cards,  177 

Pleiades,  196 

Pliny,  204 

Pneumatic  tires,  168 

Pococke,  341 

Poesche,  T.,  134 

Poland,  226 

Poles,  227 

Polo,  175 

Polynesia,  195,  198,  199,  213,  237 

Polynesians,  59,  96,  20S 

Poole,  Dr.  R.  Stuart,  14,  16 

"  Poor  Mary  sits  a- weeping,"  327,  328 

Portugal,  144 

Portuguese  cart,  134,  139,  149 

Powell,  Major  J.  W.,  232 

Proboscis-monkey,  70 

Prognathous,  48 

Pro-opic,  88 

Proto-Dravidian,  56 

Prussia,  226,  326     , 

Psychology,  395 

Purity  of  type,  60 

Quatrefages,  Professor  A.  de,  56,  365 
Queensland,  210,  213 

—  North,  213,  346 


408 


INDEX 


Rag-well,  294 

Rain-charm,  230 

Ratzel,  Prof.  F.,  211,  239 

Rawson,  Sir  R.,  38 

Ray,  S.  H.,  239,  242 

Read,  C.  H.,  206-208 

Red  races,  58 

Reeves,  W.,  281,  304 

Religion,  306,  396 

Renan,  18 

Reuleaux,  Dr.,  135 

Rhombus,  228,  232 

Rhys,  Prof.,  299,  308 

Riedel,  Dr.,  260 

Ringsend  car,  172,  173 

Ripley,  Dr.  W.  Z.,  362,  363 

Risley,  H.  H.,  81,  85,  88,  90,  368, 

369 
Roberts,  C.,38 
Roller,  134,  135,  141 
Roman  conquest,  125 

—  domination,  65 

—  nose,  69 
Romano-Britons,  36 

—  British,  67 

—  cranial  index,  67 
Rongo,  197 

Rorrington  Green,  291 
Rotch,  Lawrence,  185 
Roth,  H.  Ling,  180,  208 
Round  Barrow,  36 

—  cranial  index,  67 

—  race,  64 
Row  graves,  66 
Row  grave  type,  36 
Russia,  325 
Ruthenians,  227 
Rutland,  33 

— hair  and  eye  colour,  32 

Sacred  trees,  307 

—  wells,  307 

Sacrifice,  foundation,  280-283 

Salruck,  345 

Santa  Cruz,  194 

Sarasin,  56,  59,  326 

Savoyards,  33 

"  Saw-fish  dance,"  274 

Saxon,  cranial  index,  67 

—  skull,  37 
Saxons,  40 
Scandinavian  invaders,  68 

—  type,  34 


Scandinavians,  320 

Scape-goat,  190 

Scheffer,  Johann,  137 

Schellong,  O.,  239 

Schlegel,  Gustav  von,  202,  205,  212 

Schliemann,  Dr.,  204 

Schmeltz,  Dr.,  209,  225,  233,  236 

Schmidt,  365 

Schwirrholz,  226 

Scotch,  33 

Scotland,  222,  266,  298,  341 

—  eye  colour,  28  ;  hair  colour,  28 
Scottish  Highlanders,  38 
Sculptors  of  ancient  Greece,  50 
Secret  societies,  Melanesian,  257 
Seemann,  195 

Selangor,  206,  207,  23C 
"  Sellenger's  Round,"  261 
Semites,  13,  14,  17,  19,  20,  38 
Semitic  race,  99 

—  writing,  21 
Sephardim,  21 
Sergi,  Prof.,  15,  122 
Shakespeare,  203 
Shepherd  kings,  15,  16 
Shropshire,  220,  221,  279,  292,  334, 

382 
Siam,  193,  201,  206,  282 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  262,  263 
Siedel,  H.,  222 
Simian  groove,  103,  105 
Sinclair,  311 
Sinuous  nose,  72 
Sion  type  of  Switzerland,  33 
Skeat,  Rev.  Prof.,  392 
Skeat,  W.,  236 
Skull  of  Bolognese  lap-dog,  49 

—  Eskimo  dog,  49 
Slavs,  318 
Slide-car,  131-133 

Smith,  W.  Robertson,  256,  311,  320 

Snub  nose,  69 

Society  Islands,  195 

Sociology,  396 

Solomon  Islands,  209,  237,  252 

Somatology,  395 

Soul,  external,  191,  200,  311 

Souling,  383 

Southampton,  334 

Southern  India,  92 

South  Saxons,  37 

Spain,  21,  151 

Spanish  waggons,  148 


INDEX 


409 


Spencer,  Herbert,  264 

Spinning-wheels,  136 

Spoke-wheel,  142 

Spy,  63,  123 

Staffordshire,  220,  221,  290,  383 

Stature  in  Dordogne  district,  11 5-1 18 

Steinen,  Karl  von  den,  233,  235,   236 

Stephan,  Herr,  134 

Stevens,  203 

Stewart  Islands,  207,  208 

Stirling,  Dr.  E.  C,  210,  213,  250 

Straight  nose,  71 

Straits  Settlements,  206-208 

Straw  harness,  132 

Strutt,  J.,  184,  204,  212 

Stuart,  Mr.  H.  A.,  84,  88,  154 

Stuart-Glennie,  J.  S.,  58 

Stuckey,  Dr.  H.,  34 

Suabia,  234 

Suffolk,  36,  214 

—  hair  and  eye  colour,  32 
Sullivan,  W.  K.,  132,  153,  154 
Sumatra,  234 

Sunderland,  336 
Surrey,  219,  221 
Sweet,  391,  392 
Switzerland,  64,  266 

—  hair  and  eye  colour  of  children  in, 

43 
Symbolism,  256,  257 
Syrians,  100 
Syro- Arabs,  99,  100 
Szombathy,  J.,  143 

Table  of  cranial  nasal  indices,  96 
Table   of   races,  nasal   index   of   the 

living,  77 
Tahennu  or  Tamehu,  14 
Tahiti,  195 
Tamate,  238,  240 
Tane,  197 
Tappeiner,  362 
Tatars,  16 

Taylor,  Canon  Isaac,  138 
Taylor,  Rev.  R.,  181,  195,  209 
Technology,  396 
Teetotum,  202,  207,  208 
Temporal  crest,  48 
Ten  Kate,  Dr.  H.,  233 
Tennis,  175 
Tennyson,  74 
Teutonic  names,  33 

—  hordes,  46 


Teutons,  318 

Theal,  G.  M'Call,  231 

Thomas,  Oldfield,  368,  369 

"  Threading  the  Needle,"  273 

Thunder  spell,  222 

Thurston,  Mr.  Edgar,  85-88,  92,  93 

Timorlaut,  206 

Tiparu,  240 

Toaripi,   240 

Tobacco,  345,  346 

Todas,  86,  91,  92 

Tol,  205 

Tompkins,  290 

Topinard,  Dr.  P. ,  43-46,  76,  96,  362, 

365,  367 
Tops,  202-213 

—  humming,  202,  205,  208,  211,  213 

—  parish,  203 

—  peg,  202,  208,  212 

—  town,  203 

—  whipping,  202,  203,  204,  209 
Torres   Straits,    182,    207,    209,    212, 

239,  242,244,252,  274,  305,  319, 

336 
Trees,  sacred,  307 
Tregear,  E.,  182,  195,  209 
Troy,  204 

Tug-of-war,  214-218 
Tunisians,  364 
Turish-o-Lyn,  296 
Turks,  16,  126 
Tiirndun,  219 
Turner,  W.  Y.,  182 
Twiss,  J.,  138,  140 
Tylor,    Prof.   E.    B.,   144,   152,   183, 

198,  219,  222,  226,  231,  253,  282 

Ulotrichi,  59 
Ulster,  28 

Uniformity  of  physical  characteristics, 
60 

Vacher,  M.,  118 
Vancouver,  211 
Veddahs,  56,  59,  97,  324 
Venn,  Dr.,  8,  50 
Verrall,  Margaret,  145 
Virchow,  Prof.  R.,  66,  119,  362 

Waggons  of  Spain,  147 
Wake  games,  343 
Waldteufel,  225 


4io 


INDEX 


Wales,  28,  222 

—  eye  colour,  28 

—  hair  colour,  28 

—  North,  64 

Wallace,  Dr.  A.  R.,  180,  234 

Walloons,  64 

War  chariot,  146,  152,  153 

Ward,  R.  De  C,  186 

Warwickshire,  220,  221 

Waterford,  285 

Water  worship,  288-312 

Weber,  Dr.  Max,  206 

Weisbach,  362 

Welch,  R.,  345,  346 

Welcker,  363 

Well-dressing,  290 

Well,  rag,  294 

Wells,  pin,  93 

Wells,  sacred,  307 

Welsh  literature,  33 

Wessex  Saxons,  37 

West  Coast,  252,  254 

Westermarck,  E.,  256,  317,  319,  320 

Westmoreland,  296 

West  Saxons,  37 

Wheel,  Basque,  149 

—  solid,  ancient  Greece,  149 

—  solid,  Basque,  149 
Wheels,  133,  138 


Wheels,  clog,  141 

—  on  coins,  147,  148 

—  spoke,  142 

"When  I  was  a  Naughtv  Girl,"  265, 

268 
Whipping-top,  202,  204,  205 
White  races,  58,  77,  96 
Wicklow,  140,  295 
Wilde,  Lady,  343,  347 

—  Sir  W.,  316 
Wilson,  Alexander,  185 
Wilts,  28 

Woglom,  G.  T.,  187,  192,  194 
Worcestershire,  290 

Xanthochroi,  59 

Yates,  J.,  143 

Yellow  races,  57,   58,  71,  78,  96,  103, 

105 
York,  Cape,  346 
Yorkshire,  220,  293,  294 
Yoruba,  229,  230 

Zampa,  362 
Zeus,  51,  75 
Zuckerhandl,  362 
Zulus,  254 
Zufii,  232 


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